Dear Friends in Christ:
I am sorry I have been remiss in my correspondence these last few months. The workload has increased since one of our family practitioners left after nine years of faithful and committed service in Kenya. As our pediatrician is also away for several months, this leaves myself as the only person at Kijabe treating patients for HIV infection.
We have had frustrations, as well. Several drugs have been in very short supply, forcing us to turn away some patients. One of the drugs has become available again, and we trust God will provide for the future.
Recently, a friend and former colleague, a Hindu, visited me here in Kenya. He was so impressed with the commitment of the staff at Kijabe that he was made to remark that there is no such similar tradition in Hinduism. Christian medical missions stands as a testament to the Gospel and God's love for the world.
This past month I took care of a fifteen year-old Maasai girl who had recently given birth. Part of the placenta had remained in the womb, and when she presented to us she was extremely ill and infected. One Sunday afternoon I went to check on her and, through an interpreter, she requested that we pray with her. I asked if she was a Christian. A long story in KiMaasai then came flowing out from her. She "had been" a Christian but was harassed for her beliefs. She was married off to a distant and unfamiliar place, and her polygamous husband did not like Christianity. (Her new name, Noorbabili, signified the "many cows" for which she had been exchanged.) There were no churches and no Bibles. We prayed with her, and I shared with her a very simple fact: Jesus' first followers had no churches and no New Testament.
She slowly recovered, after three trips to the operating room. But then we learned, and had to share with her, the devastating news that she is HIV-positive. We talked to her about options for therapy, about ways to stay healthy, and about how to protect the baby. Even our special team of nurses trained to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus visited with her. But I fear all of this will be of no avail, and her family will likely not bring her back for follow-up care. She begged us not to tell anyone, and of course we did not. She is terrified of being thrown out of the boma (homestead), with no place to go.
Beyond the opportunistic infections, the medical and pharmaceutical complexities, lies an epidemic-defining social reality which we cannot comprehend. Surely, Christ came for such as these. How to confront this stupefying and terrible reality? Perhaps like Monseigneur Bienvenu in Les Miserables: "He inclined towards the distressed and the repentant. The universe appeared to him like a vast disease; he perceived fever everywhere, he auscultated suffering everywhere, and, without essaying to solve the enigma, he endeavoured to staunch the wound."
I have the good fortune of traveling to America soon to see my family and fiancée, Amanda. Thank all of you for your ongoing support. I would appreciate your prayers for Noorbabili, and for a world that treats her so.
Grace and Peace,
Jon
Dr. Jon Fielder is a member of Christ the King Lut€heran Church currently spending two years in Kenya directing the Kijabe HIV project at a clinic 40 kilometers north/northwest of Nairobi. The project is dedicated to AIDS/HIV care and prevention. If you would like to contribute to the Kijabe HIV project, make checks payable to "Africa Inland Mission" and designate that the money is for the "Kijabe HIV patient fund." Checks may be given to Christ the King Church, which will forward funds to the project.