November 9, 2005
Friends,
“What is the responsibility of the church with regard to
HIV/AIDS?” I listened to women try to answer this question
at a week-long training session for the women’s coordinators
of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY).
One woman told a story about an evangelist on his way to a far
place. Before he reaches his destination, people in a small town
ask him to stay and minister to them. He declines because he has
a commitment. They ask him at least to spend the night with them,
and to this he consents. It is a small town with no electricity.
He finds a woman in the room he is given, and he has sex with
her. Early the next morning he goes on his way. The woman becomes
pregnant. She knows who the father is, but she doesn’t know
his face or his name. Her story seems so unlikely that it puts
the Christian community into an uproar. Wives suspect their husbands.
Meanwhile, the evangelist doesn’t feel good. He becomes
sick, bed-ridden. Fearing the wrath of God, he returns to the
town to clear up the problem, even though he didn’t know,
of course, of the pregnancy. He confesses to the church elders
that he had had sex with the woman and asks their forgiveness.
Forgiveness is granted and the evangelist marries the woman. They
now have two more children and continue to live together.
Why didn’t the woman in this story say that the evangelist
was the father? Why didn’t she resist or flee? The answers
are cultural, African. Women are passive, docile, and accepting.
Resisting this man could have meant a beating or even death. The
idea of flight may never have occurred to her. (I later learned
that there is or was a practice of “giving” a woman
to a traveling evangelist in some African countries.)
Another story. “We are praying in the night, in my house,
me and my husband watching everybody the whole night, up to now,
no problem. These all-night prayer meetings mean much to the youth.
But these meetings must be chaperoned.”
The women, by telling their stories, illustrate so many challenging
realities of the HIV/AIDS pandemic facing the church—digging
deep to ferret out practices within the church that cause HIV/AIDS
along with forgiveness, reconciliation and breaking the conspiracy
of silence. This was the most revealing incident since I came
to Ethiopia 10 months ago. This incident itself teaches me many
realities—the women are willing to face what God requires
of the church, the women are not the decision-makers nor are they
able to speak directly to the decision-makers, the women tell
stories as a means of communication and I must learn more of their
language or I will miss a great deal! |
