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Finding
new ways to tackle ignorance and prejudice
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Some time after HIV/AIDS had begun to make headlines and had become a worldwide subject for concern, tabloid newspapers in Britain, at least, were referring to it as “the gay plague”. And as far as many people were concerned, that phrase defined the syndrome.
Sadly, but predictably, the ignorance behind it gave rise to the kind of complacency that served only to increase the rate of infection. Yet years later, ignorance continues to surround HIV/AIDS.
The agency Concern, which works in 27 countries, conducted a study in Ethiopia which found that more than half of rural people believed AIDS could be caught by sharing a house with a sufferer, while one third of people believed that a healthy-looking person could not have the virus.
National Bible Societies in Africa have not been slow to produce education resources and programs based on the Bible and aimed at changing behaviour in order to reduce devastation by AIDS of what were already some of the poorest countries in the world.
Allegory
The materials principally highlighted in this feature, known as the Where Is the Good Samaritan Today? outreach package, were devised by Konstanse Raen. As well as a Regional Secretary of the Norwegian Bible Society, she is now the HIV/AIDS Consultant for UBS in Africa. Her materials are by no means the only HIV/AIDS program being used by Bible Societies in Africa and next month’s World Report will focus on other AIDS programs. But they are, perhaps, different from earlier resources in that they are addressing the problem of the stigmatisation of people with HIV/AIDS. Hence the centrality to the package of Jesus’ story of The Good Samaritan: in this context, the man left for dead by thieves but ignored by other travellers becomes an allegory for the man or woman who contracts HIV/AIDS and is left to cope alone.
So the approach in the materials Ms Raen has devised is still a challenge to people to change their behaviour; but while they may already be abstaining from sex or remaining completely faithful to their spouse, there is a further challenge that Jesus asks them to meet.
Proactive
Like the rich young ruler of Matthew 19, they may say, “All these things I am already doing.” But the challenge of the materials in the Good Samaritan outreach package is the challenge to be proactive in caring for people who have AIDS. And the desired response is one that the women like Odette, Immaculée and Theresie, who are themselves infected, model so beautifully and so touchingly.
Their example and the examples dramatised in the Bible studies, plays, videos and other teaching materials described in the next few pages have touched a chord with many Bible Societies and Churches in Africa. It is our hope that as you look over these stories and photographs, you will understand why. (WR 390/23 - 02.05)