by Ashley Judd
“Oh, no, no, no …,” I told her, and pulled my chair closer. I gently twined my arms around her and hugged her close. She was stiff and anxious at first, then melted into me. I think it had been a long time since anyone had held her.
We told Annie where she could access antiretroviral drugs to treat her illness and about the secret support groups for HIV-positive people where she would be welcome. She was very keen to go, although she said she wouldn’t tell her husband. She didn’t think he would approve. Too much fear.
The next day, I sat in the now familiar public health clinic waiting room, tense about what might happen, waiting for our friends. I was relieved as each arrived, calmly and shyly. Dr. Rene, we were told, was stuck on a bus in traffic. We did not want to receive our results without him because he would need to help with the counseling in the very likely event that one or more of the women were positive. I asked the women about how work had been the night before. They said they had fallen asleep on the sidewalk, leaning against a building, while chatting. And how had they spent the day thus far? Typical housekeeping and child-minding chores. One of them told me she did her wash with our water purification product, Sur’Eau. Ever since a huge cyclone in 2000 caused flooding that ruined much of the country’s drinking water, PSI/Madagascar had teamed up with CARE and the Centers for Disease Control to produce and distribute the mild bleachlike solution to prevent waterborne disease. Apparently it’s also great on stains, and we know it’s cheap!
Dr. Rene finally arrived, his glorious smile in place, accompanied by Nini, whom he had worked hard to find. That was why he was late; he’d been out searching the streets again for her. She looked, if possible, in even worse shape than when we’d first met, or maybe it was just daylight revealing more than her stench, which a breeze from the open window swirled around the room. Her feet, bare as many Malagasy’s are, were filthy and crusty, and her legs were far too thin for a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy. Her eyes were glazed and her mouth was raw with open blisters, which she had used her red lipstick to cover with pitiful effect. She told us that her two-year-old was sick, and I could not imagine where the baby had been throwing up and pooping and how Nini had been coping with a sick kid while living on the sidewalk. I made a silent vow to help her if I could.
As the clinicians prepared to give us our results, I sat with one of Veronica’s children on my lap, a precious eight-year-old girl in a fairly clean dress with only one tear, dotted with a sweet daisy print. She had on red patent-leather shoes that did not match but were obviously worn with pride on her special day of meeting me. I braided her long ponytail to keep the sour smell of her hair more confined. Then, as I stroked her, I rested my other hand on Nini’s belly. Finally, the first number was called.
I accompanied the woman who matched the number (all names were kept anonymous) into a small counseling room. She sat in a chair across a desk from a social worker, and I knelt beside her, my arm around her shoulders, eyes fixed on the small stack of papers that I knew were everyone’s HIV test results. The social worker went very carefully over the number on the card the prostitute produced, visually and verbally confirming that the number matched the certificate and that she was the age and gender indicated. The social worker then slid the paper forward with the test outcome validated by an official stamp: NEGATIF. The woman went through a transfiguration akin to Jesus’s on the mount, from grim, fearful stoicism to an outburst of relief and joy. “Negatif!” she kept repeating, shaking the social worker’s hand as if she’d been given a diploma, crying some, but really being far too overjoyed to do any one thing for more than a second. I bawled shamelessly, caught up in the miracle but also knowing that the next woman’s result could be disastrous. We had six more to go before we were done.
The process repeated itself again and again, the frightened but resolute woman in the chair, me on the floor beside her, numbers and details verified, and results presented. They were unbelievable:
NEGATIF.
NEGATIF.
NEGATIF.
NEGATIF.
NEGATIF.
NEGATIF.
A series of miracles and the most eloquent tribute possible to the power of peer education. Seven veteran prostitutes with more than seventy-five years on the streets and thousands upon thousands of tricks turned among them had tested negative for HIV.
We all reacted in our own way. The social worker immediately began reinforcing risk management behavior and correct, consistent condom use. Our stills photographer, squished in a corner, a veteran of some of the world’s grimmest scenes in countries the U.S. State Department might not be able to find on a map, cried openly behind her lens. The VH1 documentary crew openly declared it the heaviest thing any of them had ever been through. Moyra didn’t breathe until pregnant Veronica and the toothless granny—the two we had been most sure would be HIV-positive—were also declared negative. Back in the waiting room, when we realized that all of us were free and clear (this time, at least), jubilation broke out. There was clapping, dancing, singing, and a prayer.
Now I could leave my friends without the sense of panic I had felt a day earlier when we had parted. They were free from HIV, and I fully expected all of them to remain that way. Sahouly and I shared a quiet moment when she said she couldn’t wait to go home to tell her husband, although we both confirmed the importance of them using a condom together. Relief must be tempered by reality.
As we left, I spoke with Dr. Rene about passing him money to pay for all the medical care everyone’s ailments required and in particular what to do about Nini. We agreed that at our farewell gathering that night, we would give him a small fund out of which he would settle prescription costs. It was the least we could do and in fact was very inexpensive. The costs for delivering Nini’s baby at a clinic, plus her medications, her two-year-old’s meds, and the meds for all the other women’s sick babies was less than $100.
We wrapped up our visit to Madagascar with an official press conference to thank the government and our donors, followed by a big party for everyone involved in the trip, which officially kicked off our thrilling collaboration with the Top Réseau health clinics. When we arrived at the hotel ballroom, I chose for the first time all week to speak English instead of French. I have been told by a marquis that I speak a very good seventeenth-century French, which might have been a bit formal for this setting. I thought I could transmit more spirit and attitude for the kids in the room in English. However, when dear Nouci came to translate for me, she totally froze, numb from exhaustion, and told me I had to help her! I took the mike back and translated myself into French, satisfying the government officials in the room with a little wave and shout-out when I was finished. The event wrapped when our energetic peer educators did a dance that told the story of the ABCs (abstinence, being faithful, correct and consistent condom use). After celebrating their commitment and spunk, I slunk out of the reception to sit quietly in my hotel room (the one with seventeen chairs), to pray for guidance about Nini. I called Dario and told him that if I were to leave here without helping her, her life and the lives of her children would be on my conscience. He offered to help, and I decided to present my plan to our country director in the morning.
At the airport, I was chased into the lounge by some wild Italians shouting my name. Having been on the front page of every paper (there are six) upon our arrival made privacy a joke, even down to being photographed at a swimming pool. One day I was swimming freestyle, and every time I came up for air I heard a young woman pleading, “Mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” But the attention was good for reducing the brutal stigma around HIV, and I endured the hoopla with more than my typical modicum of grace. Sequestered in the lounge with the Italians still carrying on but Papa Jack standing sentry, I told the PSI team I wanted to set Nini up in a house with no obligation for three months, to allow her simply to care for her newborn and to begin to heal. (She’d had no chance to grieve the death of two of her babies; this is something I continue to rue, the
time and space so many poor people lack to process life’s insults and catastrophes.) After three months, we would explore what her interests were and put her into some kind of training or school. We would wean her off our provisional support when she had a job. We also agreed I would regularly wire Dr. Rene money for the other children’s health care needs. Although I wish I could do this for every prostituted woman in the world, I left Antananarivo somewhat satisfied that I had at least helped a few. I slept most of the way to Cape Town, waking up only to write, my lifeline in this work, and glance out the window expectantly at the South African landscape.
Chapter 11
PRAYING WITH MY PRESENCE
Meeting my hero, Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Because I remember, I despair. Because
I remember, I have a duty to reject despair.
—ELIE WIESEL
e are born alone and we die alone, and the frequent loneliness of this work resonates with the reality of individuated experience. I write to try to comprehend, process, heal, share news of the human community with those who cannot travel as far and wide as I, to raise consciousness, to raise money, to be of service, but I am ultimately alone with my response to my experiences. We all are. That is why mentors are so important, because they have gone ahead to where we have not yet been, perhaps not even in our dreams, and they look back at us with the love born of wisdom, grace, mercy, and compassion to give us hints as to how to have our own experiences with integrity. Such a mentor to me, first in spirit and now in the flesh, is Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
As a university student, I formed my politics and my activism listening to Archbishop Tutu’s speeches on LP records that South Africans, anticipating house arrest, brought to America, when they fled the repressive, racist Nationalist government. Kate Roberts knew this and had surprised me while we were sitting in the hotel lobby in Antananarivo with the news that we had been granted an audience with him during our visit to Cape Town. The floodgates opened and I started bawling, causing Kate to well up, which made the others in our group cry, even though they didn’t know precisely why we were crying, and we all just sat there unapologetically laughing and crying in the well-lit lobby, in full view of anyone who looked our way. The idea that I would finally meet this hero of nineteen years’ standing to whom I could directly attribute the work I am now doing in Africa floored me. Meeting him when I was at an emotional and spiritual ebb was exactly what I needed.
The archbishop greeted our delegation warmly at his offices in Cape Town. His office was off a busy four-lane paved road that had elevated crosswalks used by herds of livestock. The archbishop was smaller than I expected, but as lively and elegant as I knew he would be, wearing his signature gold cross and a casual cotton shirt with an earth-colored print. We posed for a few photos in front of a beautiful unity quilt. Then I went with him to his office to sit behind closed doors for a moment. He asked if I had seen myself in the local newspaper. When I told him I hadn’t, he laughed.
“Then you are less vain than I,” he said, his eyes twinkling with what I would learn is his perpetual good humor. “Because I always scoop up the papers straightaway if I suspect I’ll be in them!” I thought, Are you kidding me? He genuinely is this wonderful? I was besotted.
While South Africa had changed a great deal since Nelson Mandela was released from prison and his African National Congress had defeated the National Party in the country’s first fully open election, Desmond Tutu had not changed a whit. He could easily have gone into politics and held high public office, but he chose to retain his role as a spiritual and moral leader. Archbishop Tutu was as charismatic and appealing as I expected him to be, but I was surprised that he asked me a lot of questions. Instead of the usual friendly small talk, he wanted to hear the details of our work at PSI and my impressions of my trip and what I would tell my people when I returned home. He had a wonderful way of making me feel that we were somehow on the same level—he actually thanked me for my undergrad campus activism—even when I was so obviously in awe of everything he had done in his beautiful, difficult, profound life as a freedom fighter and servant.
In his questions, the archbishop revealed his own thoughts, and I wove them into my answers to bring the conversation back to him—so I could selfishly enjoy his musings. He spoke about gender inequality, prejudice, and the purpose of sex between married couples as an instrument of love and expression, a way to become more God-like. He talked about the foolishness of advocating abstinence without a balanced approach that acknowledged we did not live yet in an ideal world in which everybody behaved sensibly all the time. He had made South African history in 1996 by recording public service announcements for PSI that warned that the terrible challenge of HIV/AIDS required a pragmatic approach to stop it.
“We in the church believe that sex should only take place within marriage,” he’d said in the PSA. “However, for those of you who do practice sex outside of marriage, I encourage you to take the right precautions and practice safer sex. Please use condoms.” The spot caused a sensation, because until then, the conservative state-run television station had never allowed the word condom to be uttered on air.
Ten years later, despite the warnings from Archbishop Tutu and other prominent figures, 5.5 million South Africans were infected with HIV—nearly 20 percent of the population. And only 21 percent of those sufferers were being treated with antiviral drugs. An estimated 320,000 were dying from AIDS every year. The work had just begun.
Although I believe that the solutions to the problems of the world lie within each and every one of us, I also learned anew that no one person, not even someone with the stature, experience, faith, and perspective of Desmond Tutu, can do it alone. No individual can provide the silver bullet that will stop the world’s problems in their tracks, reverse the many wrongs that persist. His wisdom reaffirmed that we all—governments, NGOs, faith-based organizations, and corporations—must rally around education and prevention to slow the spread of AIDS, to ameliorate conditions worldwide. Our only hope is to work together.
When our conversation was finished, I imposed on the archbishop for counseling, even though I could tell he was ready to move on with his day. He graciously offered to hear what was in my heart. I told him how, on several occasions during my travels in Asia and Africa, I was worried that I could not feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. I told him about the (seemingly) godforsaken rice tents of Antananarivo and the profound grief of a young mother dying of AIDS at a hospice in Cambodia with whom I could not summon that palpable sweetness God has so often given me in difficult, complex situations.
The archbishop said he would not presume to give me spiritual advice but instead told me a story: There was a Jew in a concentration camp in World War II who was being ruthlessly tormented by his Nazi guard. On one particularly harsh morning, the officer ordered the beleaguered man to clean a foul, stinking latrine. The guard taunted the Jew as he worked and said to him, “Tell me, where is your God now?” The Jew looked up at him and responded, “My God is in here with me.”
I buried my face in my hands, realizing that just because I couldn’t feel God in the rice tents, just because I couldn’t conjure a command performance of the Holy Spirit at the hospice, didn’t mean that God was not there with me.
We spoke for another half hour, and he nourished me with the fruits of his experience. He talked about spiritual maturation and how sometimes during our growth we have dry periods, or rather spells that feel dry, because we have moved beyond the need for that blissful flood of grace that encouraged and informed us at the beginning of our journey. I instantly apprehended what he was telling me—I had always been so grateful for the grace I could summon and feel growing in my heart when I meditated. But now I saw that those instruments had served to confine and reassure my thoughts until I was mature enough for something more subtle—when I could sit in a rice tent and feel what it was like, and not flee its reality by asking God to blow me away with some on
-the-spot transcendence.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, my mentor in spirit and now in the flesh, helped me realize that I didn’t always have to pray with words or thoughts or have that buzz that came with them, because I was praying with my very body, with my presence. I thank him so much for it, and for everything he has given all of us.
On the flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, I closed my eyes and all the sense of Spirit that I did not have at the rice tents and hospice flooded my chest as if a tuning fork had been sounded. It coursed throughout my body, especially my chest, and this time the sense of Spirit was accompanied by colors, something I had heard others describe but had never experienced myself. I was flooded with rainbows of color that I could feel. I pictured the plastic on the sidewalk and rained down on it with white light, with majesty, with protection, with purification. I pictured the weak and ill at the hospice, and they glowed with keen, brilliant lights. It was a busy ninety-minute flight, the prayers flying through the African sky faster, higher, and more accurately than any airplane ever could.
The part of this trip that I most looked forward to, outside of our meeting with Archbishop Tutu, was visiting Soweto. I had always elegized Soweto as the seat of the struggle, where angry, righteous Africans fought against persecution by a monstrous minority government. Images from the news, bulletins from Amnesty International, U2 records—I followed it all. To actually go to Soweto was akin to a pilgrimage.
And as with so many other things in life, I was quickly disabused of my romantic fervor. My Soweto was a hotbed of political activism, militant youth, and safe houses for underground freedom fighters—I had entirely overlooked the shantytown dimension and the seemingly intractable poverty, the appalling reality of slum living. Soweto is a city within a city, sprawling beyond the southwestern suburbs of Johannesburg, home to about a million souls. Even after housing segregation officially ended with the fall of the apartheid regime, Soweto’s population remained almost all black. Although there are middle-class neighborhoods and even mansions for the newly rich who choose to live in Soweto for its vibrant sense of community, these stand in stark contrast with the overcrowded cinder-block houses and tin shanties that surround them. The economy of South Africa remains woefully lopsided, and the scourge of AIDS has made it even harder for the poor to enjoy the fruits of freedom.