Boniface fulfils his mission
by Konstanse Raen

Former magazine editor Boniface began reading the Bible when he was diagnosed with AIDS and joined a support group in Kigali called Urukundo Rw'Imana ('God's Love'). Reading the Bible brought him peace before his death. Photo: Norwegian BS (RWA04DJ-64.JPG)

When Konstanse Raen leads courses introducing the Good Samaritan outreach package, it is hard to find HIV-positive men willing to share their experiences but Boniface was an exception.

Boniface was a well-known man in Kigali – the editor of one of the best magazines in the city. And because he was a media man, he had a sense of how to edit his speeches so that they made his listeners laugh as well as cry.

At the seminars he took part in with me, he used to introduce himself as the editor of this popular magazine, with a good income and a wide circle of acquaintances. He enjoyed good food and drinks and took what life offered. But then his wife died and later his second wife died. He began to feel unwell himself and understood that he had to be tested for HIV.

Frightened

He would describe how frightened he was the day he went to get the result. The first time, he turned round and went away before entering the office.

“I thought I would die when I saw the result... I could have knocked down the nurse who gave it to me — I was that angry”

But then he summoned all his strength and went straight to the nurse on duty and asked for his envelope.

“I thought I would die when I saw the result,” he said. “I could have knocked down the nurse who gave it to me – I was that angry.”

Instead, he called for a taxi and went home. All the way he was overwhelmed with a single thought: I am going to die.

The first thing he had to do was tell his two daughters. Calling them in he said, “Close the door. For the time being this must remain within the family, but the day they bury Daddy, you are to say openly, ‘Daddy died of AIDS!’”

And as he uttered the word ‘AIDS,’ he started sobbing. The girls were aged about 12 and they had never seen their Daddy cry before. So they immediately rushed out, calling to the neighbours, “Come quickly! Daddy is dying of AIDS!”

Goodbye

So that evening neighbours, relatives and friends all came to say goodbye. They called the Methodist pastor to pray for him and they called the Catholic pastor to come and hold his ceremony; and they even called the Muslim imam to come and pray for him. There was really a great gathering in the evening – a party, but everyone was crying because he was a popular person and he was going to die.

Not being a religious man, Boniface had never seriously read the Bible. He was a bit of a womaniser and had been used to smoking four packets of cigarettes a day and drinking ten bottles of beer before the sun went down.

But now he was facing his own mortality. That evening he said goodbye to everyone. But the next day and over the days that followed, he found he was still alive. Gradually people stopped paying him special visits and his life got more and more miserable. He lost his appetite and was too unwell to work. He stopped washing and began to smell. His legs were paralysed so he couldn’t walk and he went into a deep depression, lying in his darkened room. His first and second wives had died so there were just his two young girls and they didn’t know what to do. He just wanted to die really, but his life went on…

God’s Love

And then some neighbours told him about a group of HIV-positive women who visited other people in a similar condition. They were from a support group for people with HIV-AIDS called ‘Urukundo Rw’Imana’ (‘God’s Love’).

“I am no longer afraid. Peace has replaced fear in my heart!”

“Shall we ask them to come in?” Boniface’s neighbours suggested.

At first, Boniface declined but after a while he changed his mind and two women from ‘God’s Love’ started to visit him.

“Boniface, we know just how you feel,” they said, “because we have been in the same situation.”

And as they visited Boniface, talked to him, washed him, nursed him and gave him food, he slowly began to get stronger.

They came and gave him a Bible, suggesting that he read some of the Psalms in particular.

“I hadn’t read a Bible for 30 years!” he would tell the audience. “But these women changed my life. They said: ‘Read here; it’ll do you good.’” They also read from the Bible for me, they sang and they consoled me and gave me hope.”

The two women also told him that their support group was 230 strong and held meetings every Wednesday at a Methodist church just one kilometre up the road from his house.

“‘You should come with us!’” they said. “From that day I formed the desire to be strong enough to one day join in their meeting, so I started practising.”

Although paralysed, he was able to walk with sticks and he started training for the journey.

Eventually, one day he was able to walk along the road to the meeting, and when he arrived the whole group rejoiced that he had survived long enough to make it.

Another life

Tears would flood Boniface’s eyes as he described this walk – not back to life itself, but towards another life, a life he was happy to have found before death caught up with him.

But Boniface wanted to go further: having joined the association, he had the idea of publishing a magazine for the members and acquired a computer to make a start; he began to accompany me and the other women to seminars where he shared his testimony and in this way he made new friends. He wanted to pass on information about the disease and about how to have a positive outlook while being HIV-positive.

Eventually, one day he was able to walk along the road to the meeting, and when he arrived the whole group rejoiced that he had survived long enough to make it

Once I visited Boniface with two journalists from Norway. He told them how God’s Word and the love from the Christian sisters had changed his life.

Promise

“I am no longer afraid. Peace has replaced fear in my heart!” he told them. Then he asked them if he might read them a verse from the Bible.

He looked up what he called “my promise”, in the Book of Titus: “I  left you in Crete, so that you could put in order the things that still needed doing.” (Titus 1:5 GNB).

I was acting as translator, and, thinking he had given a wrong verse number, I asked him to explain what the reference to Crete meant.

“Crete? That’s Gikondo, where I live!” he said. “God has told me to complete what has not been finished. Then it will be time to depart.”

When I last visited Kigali, Boniface was no longer there. His mission had been completed. But his good witness lives on. (WR 390/28 - 02.05)