Life can look so very different, depending on where in the world you live. We know this truth as we gaze safely through our screens into different parts of the world, whilst the COVID-19 beast stalks. We inhale the terror of continuing health and economic death in various parts of the world. We try and comprehend each statistic as a human life, a name with a story, but our finite minds struggle and strain. And invariably fail.
Most in our generation have never encountered a beast which can climb borders without regard for race or status. A monster which inhabits and menaces our air. We find ourselves exhaling, attempting to contain our individual, crippling emotions of fear and anger.
Having so recently celebrated the true hope in the Easter message we strain to give thanks for our many blessings as we seek safe haven in Australia. Our great sunburnt land has endured so much in recent months ravaged by flame, drought and flood. The ink from stories written about our brave volunteer firefighters had hardly dried when COVID took centre stage as an all-consuming scourge.
This past summer we have known the greatest need for our parched land to be that of water. The greatest need as autumn turns, is again, water. My husband Matthew, a fellow doctor, urges all to minimise risk by his chant ‘wash your hands’. Such is Matthew’s mandate to advocate for hand washing in this COVID era that as a family we joke he needs a t-shirt made proclaiming this hygienic habit to slay the beast.
In our own villages we are surrounded by people assuming basic habits of the hunter and gatherer. This repeats the world over, as toilet rolls and canned foods, masks and alcohol sanitisers are scooped and hoarded. All the while in the background we have water dripping from taps in our gardens, kitchens, laundries and bathrooms.
Pipes, taps, buckets, forgotten water restrictions. My mind drifts from this forgotten need to Africa, where the drought still grips. Now I smell the slime in dry damns, and I feel the endless dust in my eyes and mouth. I smell useless dried cakes of soap. Behind me lie the dry, naked and flaking purple mountains that hem my childhood in. Those very mountains, that were the backdrop of my childhood where my parents taught me the basic tenants of resilience, truth and kindness.
I reflect back on my parents’ battle with the terrifying beasts of Tuberculosis and how, in the dust, our family planted the seeds of AAF. 40 years later the roots are thick, deep and steady and our faithful team stands tall against this same mountainous backdrop. Now in a nation-imposed police lockdown, unable to communicate village to village, forbidden to drive on roads, and unable to sing or hug as they bury the dead. As always, with no water.
The terrifying truth is that AAF is serving the most vulnerable of vulnerable who must, like us, confront the beast. In my village of Camden, Australia, we can protect our vulnerable from view of the beast as we pull down our blinds with layers of protection in distancing, Telehealth, frantic cleaning, warm water, bleach and time. In Africa, there will be no place to hide.
Much of our work in Africa has been supporting remnant grandmas following the HIV /AIDS pandemic, who care for all their deceased children’s children. I shudder. Who else but these precious grandmothers (our Gogos) exist to hold their orphaned grandchildren? How will she hunker away from the beast when there is one hut, one fire, one blanket as the winter snow starts to cling to the purple mountains? Who will soothe her fear, as she knows these children carry the legacy of weakened immune systems from the traces of the last pandemic which once stole all her own adult babies? Where will she sell her garden products for food when police block walking tracks to town? She knows that she would be missed, when no other adult exists to hold and care for these swathes of children. No other adult knows these little ones’ names, or their very great needs. For her, there exists no hope in a Centrelink snaking line, nor in Jobseeker and Jobkeeper words.
The need for water reappears. If this insidious monster can best be slayed by the washing of hands, how can this war be won by Grannies with no water? No pipes. No taps. No showers. Or baths. No alcohol gel. Instead, endless bleak days of hungry togetherness pressed into smoky mud huts. When a cough comes, and it will, there is no google to symptom check, no Telehealth for medical advice, no fellow adult to comfort, no available hospital. There is no sight of a COVID test, hence no way to know if the monster has come. Then follows no statistics of cases in the country. In these parts of Africa, the forgotten ones always die alone, and quietly. No one is there to hear them, fortifying the belief that the forgotten people don’t count.
Only in the silent thuds of too many shallow red dirt backyard graves, dug in haste. That is how we will look back and count the lost. As we have before. Because Africa has done this type of adversity before, she will overcome. She is burnt repeatability and destroyed, yet she regenerates. And she will again. We breathlessly await springtime.
As we all stare down this COVID crisis and its implications for us, we implore our AAF family and friends to keep safe, to nestle away where possible in safety, with hope. Together we will endure this crisis of health and livelihood. It is in trying times such as these that real strength and resilience comes to the fore.
In the interim, please do not forget AAF. Please do not forget the hidden names and faces of those we have long laboured to serve. We are still open and doing business, creating new avenues in which to walk as we care. Because our roots are deep, we remain committed to reinvention as needs change. It is true, our team are desperate. But the AAF team are our hands and feet, and despite police lockdown they ingratiated themselves to a local police team who then assisted them (with use of their police vehicles) to deliver food parcels to the starving. Likewise, our contacts in Kenya have creatively started sewing face masks in their homes to deliver hope and love to their elderly. It is indeed an honour to know such creative, generous souls exist on this hurting planet.
Our team is facing uncertainty. The International Monetary Fund states the world economy in 2020 will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression, and as things currently stand, our fundraising events planned for 2020 cannot go ahead. Our team are acutely aware that we may not be able to meet their wages or our projects in 2020. However, they are pressing on and facing this latest struggle with the same steeliness and hope with which they confront HIV/AIDS. They have chosen to put aside their own fear and uncertainty and be vessels of life and hope to those most in need.
We are committed to bringing you more stories of resilience from the dust of Africa. It is our hope that as we clasp our packets of fresh toilet rolls and mindlessly clean our hands with sanitiser each time we visit the shops, that we would all have moments of sublime thankfulness as we dodge the beast. Most especially though, thankfulness for our lives, our loves and for our water. May we then remember the vulnerable, forgotten ones across the ocean who have the same needs to love, and be loved, as we do. Those whom you have so kindly helped in the past.
And then, please one final request…
‘Wash your hands’
Warm regards Jane