What do I know about AIDs? Not that much actually. I realized this when we attended our fist youth event in Kanungu. Obviously, it’s a hot topic in Africa. The event was specifically planned for AIDs education and awareness and were asked to speak on the topic approximately 10 minutes before walking to the church for the start of the event. We did explain to the contact that we don’t have a program planned and don’t know that many facts to speak about. We tried to make the best of the situation and said that we could figure something out if he could give us some guidance. Andrew told us that one of the things they teach kids is not to smoke because it leads to AIDs. Clearly, we didn’t understand the culture enough to really follow this line of logic exactly and decided we weren’t going to give much advice to this group.
We arrived at the venue and as they always do, things worked out. We introduced ourselves and told a little bit about ourselves. Then, we opened questions. We got asked different kinds of question like:
-
Do any of you have AIDs?
-
What should a spouse do if they find out their partner has AIDs?
Does anyone in America have AIDs? How many people in America have AIDs? -
Does America have 5 year marriage contracts where you can re-evaluate if you want to stay in it after the contract has ended?
-
I’m an orphan and have no money to pay my school fees. What should I do to raise money?
So, we did our best to answer the questions. The last question I listed here was the most difficult one for me. It came from a very young girl who just wanted some advice. I struggled to tell her what I would do in her situation and give some advice on what I thought she should do. I told her that first and foremost she should pray about it because God is in control of her life and will take care of her. I believe that, but it’s so hard for me to just tell someone to pray about it when I know I could easily pay for her school fees with the advantage of my American dollars.
The questions this month have been many and varied. We’ve answered them all the best way we know how. Fortunately, there were two AIDs experts in the audience who stood up and told the scientific and medical answers to all the really deep questions. All in all, the event went well. We were able to end the program with a Biblical message about trying to stay as far away from sin instead of getting as close to it as possible. This message was heavy on my heart after listening to the program and thinking back to the way I’ve looked at life in the past-always asking how close I can get to fire without getting burned.
Speaking of things that I know very little about, we visited other youth programs that weren’t specific to AIDs and the kinds of questions we got were always about agriculture, vegetation, climate, career opportunity, and marriage. I learned how little I know about the way that we irrigate our fields in America, how I don’t think much about the commodities we produce in Texas or other places. I always told people we grow a lot of cotton and cattle where I come from. Also, people couldn’t believe it when I told them how much we pay for a pineapple where they can buy a deliciously ripe pineapple for no more than 30 cents USD
.
