More Than Eyes Can See: A Nine Month Journey into the Aids Pandemic
Author(s): Rhidian Brook (Author)
Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 1 July 2007
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Print length: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 0714531421
ISBN-13: 9780714531427
Book Description
More than eyes can see is an account of a-nine-month journey made by the author and his family into some of the world”s HIV/AIDS epicentres. Sent by the Salvation Army to bear witness to the work they were doing in response to the pandemic, Rhidian Brook, his wife and two children, follow a trail of devastation through communities still shattered and being broken by this disease: truck-stop sex-workers in Kenya, victims of rape in Rwanda, child-headed families in Soweto, children of prostitutes in India, farmers who sold blood for money in China. It is a remarkable journey among the infected and the affected through a world that, despite seeming on the brink of collapse, is being held together, not by power, politics, guns and money; but by small acts of kindness performed by unsung people choosing to live in hope.
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From the Author
‘On this journey you will see things you won’t believe. But you will aslo see things that show that hope can transform and overcome the most appalling circumstances.” Dr. Ian Campbell, Head of Salvation Army HIV/AIDS Response Worldwide.
About the Author
Rhidian Brook is a previous winner of the Somerset Maughan Award, a Betty Trask Award winner and his first two novels were published by Harper Collins. He is a high profile radio broadcaster on Radio 4. His film, ‘Mr Harvey Lights a Candle’ with Timothy Spall was seen by millions in 2005 on BBC 1.
On my first day of working with the Kithituni local response team I went to the funeral of a man who had died of AIDS. They were going to go and show their support for the dead man’s family – a wife and five children – as well as the extended community. Going to funerals was an important part of the team’s work and this was their fifteenth AIDS related funeral in the last six months. I met with the team*1 at ten in the morning at their `office’ – a corrugated tin roofed, concrete hut next to the Salvation Army church. This day’s team (it would vary according to availability, employment, weather, health) consisted of Georgie-Porgie, Johnnie Boy, Anton, Onesmus, (all young men in their early twenties) Margaret and Catherine, (both mothers and daughter-in-laws of Jonathan and Agnes); Oral Roberts (named after the great preacher*) and me. Oral was not a Salvationist, he was an Anglican, but for many people life around here had got too short for these kind of denominational differences; like the effect war has on people of different class and political persuasion, AIDS was having a unifying affect. Today the gathering was bolstered by the presence of an old woman called Mama Safi who wore a Stars and Stripes bandana and three other elderly ladies who between them had formed a co-operative garden market, selling vegetables and fruit, as well as milk. They had just purchased a cow called Miriam and the milk was being given to the AIDS orphans in the community. The last to arrive was Joseph, also a young man in his early twenties, who had been to deliver okra from his shamba for Friday market. That completed the team. We formed a circle – `a beeg, beeg, circle’ – with the white plastic chairs forming the outer ring. Johnnie Boy spoke a benediction and then started to clap and sing and the hot hut soon swelled with the sound of these voices giving thanks for what they had, which to my eyes wasn’t very much. The first devotional they sung was the one that we sang most frequently and became the `team anthem’ out on the road. It had a beautiful melody that was easy to harmonise and the words – in Swahili – had a powerful refrain.
hakuna mungu kama wewe (x three) There is no god like you nimetembea I have travelled nimetafuta I have searched nimezunguka I have turned all round hakuna na hatakuwepo none and there shall never be The thanking-of-God continued way beyond my own capacity for thanking Him but I was fast having to recalibrate my sense of what to be grateful for and with it my capacity for thankfulness. We were beginning to learn that here, each day got through was something to be celebrated and a person could find in the smallest provision – milk from the cow, a soda, a glass of water – something to be grateful for. After the devotionals I was asked to formally introduce myself and say why I was here. It was no bad thing to be asked this question – easy to presume you know the answer. I said that I was here to try and understand the problem of HIV/AIDS and see how they as a community were responding to it. Thankfully no one seemed thrown by this. Then Onesmus, who was the unofficial leader of the team, reminded everyone of the team’s raison d’être: why they were here; what they were trying to achieve. He spoke clearly, in a leaderly way, although there was in this introduction and his phraseology a strange hybrid of the naturally eloquent African way of speaking and the consultancy aphorism the West exports to the world. `The responsiveness of the community is what we are trying to inspire.’ `We believe that what we are doing is helping others to realise their human capacity and so inspire others.’ `By staying connected to community we are transferring our knowledge to help them realise their capacity to respond.’ His words were backed by the statements and words written on A2 flip-chart paper and that decorated the peeling walls of the hut. Marker-penned statements of intent: `Aspire To Inspire Before You Expire;’ `Care Leads To Change.’ Half way into the meeting I could not stop myself from thinking: `Is this it? A handful of people, a little faith, some by-rote management-speak slogans, and some songs? Is this an adequate response to the world’s greatest health crisis?’ If, at first, I found myself inwardly mocking the language (its proximity to advertising ) in time I’d hear it differently. The slogans and the pep talk were, of course, of more profound consequence than any equivalent discussion that may have occurred in a brainstorming meeting; and these people weren’t discussing a sub-plot for a murder story or a headline for a life assurance company, they were trying to fight a war against a pandemic with whatever weapons they could – including words. Maybe where there is a lack of money, language (which costs nothing) has to take up some of the slack.
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