All That Is Bitter and Sweet (29 page)

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.

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.