Jabu Matsebula (left), who is living with HIV and taking anti-retroviral drugs, talks about the strength she finds in her faith community to a Goshen College media team. From left, Goshen team members are faculty leader Rachel Lapp (partially shown) and students Kimberlee Rohrer, Anna Groff and Dawit Kebede. A nurse from nearby King Sabuza Clinic (center) visits Matsebula to monitor her health. Bearing witness, conveying relevance: Goshen journalism students report on response of Swaziland Christians to AIDS
Rachel Lapp Seated on a reed mat in a dimly lit concrete home, Anna Groff's notes were sparse as she and fellow Goshen College junior Kimberlee Rohrer interviewed Phumile, a young mother. Like nearly 40 percent of the population of Swaziland, Phumile is HIV-positive; like the two students, she is in her early 20s. Phumile spoke about weekly visits from a volunteer who had been trained in HIV/AIDS care by Faith Bible School, which began as a Bible training institute and is now also working to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic with support from MCC. Phumile is grateful for the visits, particularly because she doesn't have easy access to a clinic or hospital. Swaziland has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the world and its hospitals are overwhelmed. Phumile's grandmother — her primary caretaker — also cares for Phumile's baby on the family's rural homestead, and she brought the baby to Phumile as Goshen College students prepared to depart. Though the small child cried out, his mother was too weak to pick him up. The future of Phumile's child could be tied to that of the estimated 80,000 orphans in Swaziland whose access to care, food, medical services and education is of increasing concern to national and international organizations. Rohrer and Groff were part of a team of Goshen College students who traveled with two faculty sponsors to Swaziland in March to learn about the HIV/AIDS crisis and practice international journalism. MCC hosted the visit. Throughout a week of information-gathering, photography and on-camera interviewing, the group met nurses, government officials, service workers, clinicians, pastors, educators, caretakers, mothers and grandmothers of HIV-positive individuals, orphans whose parents died of AIDS and people living with the disease. As Groff reflected on her visit with Phumile, she said, "I found it very difficult to maintain my role as a reporter. I thought about how different our lives are, even though we are similar in age." Swaziland became the group's destination in part because it has the highest percentage of HIV-infected citizens in the world. Students learned that a cultural stigma against those with HIV/AIDS makes it difficult to respond to the disease in many countries. "I hope young people in my community would seek out more information about the AIDS pandemic and the complex issues that underlie its destructiveness, instead of jumping to conclusions about the people living with AIDS," Groff said. Groff shared Phumile's story in a Goshen College convocation in April and has written a profile for the student newspaper. Rohrer and another student, Ben Steininger, will produce a video presentation to be shown first to youth and interested adults at the 2005 Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada gathering in July in Charlotte, North Carolina. A five-minute audio documentary already completed by Steininger has aired on the campus radio station and received a second-place prize in a statewide student journalism contest. Zachary Albrecht, a Goshen College junior, has a number of photographs from the trip which will appear on a Web site about HIV/AIDS in Swaziland.
Rachel Lapp is the Goshen College director of public relations.
|
|
|
