Project provides food to AIDS patients in Tanzania

Sarah Adams
October 13, 2005

A small room in the back of Arusha Mennonite Church receives few visitors. The office used for HIV/AIDS counseling, while staffed, is rarely used. It may be the lack of a door and curtains in the room to ensure privacy, or it may be that one has to walk through the church to get to the office. Many HIV-positive people fear the disease continues to carry a stigma.

Still the lack of visitors to the church-based office is little deterrent for the 12 trained members of the HIV/AIDS home care committee. The committee — composed of both men and women, elders and youth — seeks out patients. They make announcements in church asking members to refer friends or neighbors who might need assistance. They do outreach programs for youth and frequently visit a nearby village that is home to a tanzanite mine and large transient population.

But the committee had a problem. In Tanzania, it is customary to bring a small gift along on a visit to someone's home. In the past, committee members often had no means to offer a gift.

This year, MCC is providing Arusha Mennonite Church's home care committee with a grant to purchase food for the AIDS-affected families committee members visit. Lucas Nyangaramela, a committee member, is grateful for the support. "When someone would explain their problem to us, we would feel their suffering, but have nothing to offer," said Nyangaramela. "But now, with this support from MCC, at least we have something — a little bit of food."

For someone suffering from the physical and stigmatizing effects of HIV/AIDS, this small gift and the counseling and encouragement that come with it can mean a lot. "If we've got something to give, then we give. If we've got advice, then we advise," says Rev. G. Mchomvu, another volunteer with the project.

For vulnerable households that are struggling to feed themselves, the gift of food is especially important. "You go to visit a patient and you can cry yourself, seeing this person in pain. And if you go to the home empty-handed, you can feel so guilty that night that you might not sleep," says Mchomvu.

Hamila Shabani, 38, welcomes the rice, cooking oil, maize flour, and beans committee members bring to her and her children and grandchildren.

Shabani became a widow when her husband died three years ago. Since that time, she has struggled to support her six children and four grandchildren. While Shabani is not a churchgoer, an elder from the church who lives in her area connected her with the committee. A year before her husband's death from AIDS, the family moved to Arusha, where they have since rented a one-room home. Because no one in the house has a steady job, income is unreliable and food is scarce.

For the Shabani family, feeding 11 people is a challenge. She appreciates both the food and the fellowship that visits from Arusha Mennonite's outreach brings. "I'm very happy. I feel like my relatives have come to greet me," Shabani says of the committee's visits.

Home visits are a delicate balance of physical, social, and spiritual support. Even with home care training committee members receive, visiting families that are affected by AIDS is emotionally strenuous. "Since MCC gave us the funding to purchase food to carry along on our visits, we can feel light to go there," says Mchomvu.

And for those patients who are not from the church, providing physical support in the way of food is a means for committee members to build trust with patients. This trust often leads to opportunities to discuss faith and to pray with patients. This is important, says Mchomvu, because in the midst of a situation as difficult as AIDS, "Only the church knows how to give people the message of hope."

 

Sarah Adams is MCC's HIV/AIDS coordinator

 

Generations at Risk Projects in Tanzania