November 2002

AIDS in Honduras

by the Rt. Rev’d. Rodney R. Michel

Mission to Honduras

Sometimes we have an experience that gets into our heart and we know we will never forget it. A recent journey to Honduras with the national HIV/AIDS Commission was just such an experience. It was profound and powerful and touched all of us deeply in our hearts and souls.

The nine Commission members arrived in San Pedro Sula on March 11th at the invitation of Bishop Leo Frade. We had come to a country that has seventeen percent of the population of Central America and fifty per cent of the AIDS cases in Central America. We had come to study the extent of the pandemic and to see how the faith community is responding to those infected and affected by the disease. We were moved by what we saw and heard and we were abundantly blessed in what we experienced.

The lush, tropical beauty of Honduras is still scarred with washed out roads and bridges, damaged houses, schools and commercial buildings, and countless reminders of the destruction of Hurricane Mitch. Rugged mountains and jungle greenery are contrasted with massive tent cities, entire rural villages populations living under tarpaulin shelters and people going about the day to day business of life.

The Episcopal Cathedral of the Good Shepherd stands at the end of what was once a road, now in the process of being rebuilt. Many churches were utterly destroyed. Some schools have only one wall left standing and lots of folk still travel down the road with a two wheel cart and a bony old horse. We met a woman on a country road who lived beside a small stream. She and her husband and two children lived in a house the size of a double bed mattress, with shelves and hanging baskets above to hold their earthly belongings. Cooking and eating and other activities of life take place under the small shelter by the side of the hut.

People with HIV/AIDS live quiet, hidden lives so that they won’t be discriminated against or ostracized by society. We learned that the cost of the medicines which give hope to people with HIV/AIDS in our country prohibits any one but the very wealthy from ever receiving them in Honduras. Diagnostic testing equipment, taken for granted in so many places, is non-existent in Honduras. People are refused employment or released from their jobs if they are found to be HIV positive. The government is unable to fund programs which would prevent HIV/AIDS mothers from passing the disease to their unborn babies, and there are countless babies and children who have been abandoned because they carry the modern day plague.

Add to this having to brush your teeth with bottled water, being careful of what you eat, tolerating oppressive heat and humidity and having to receive assorted inoculations and anti-malarial pills before beginning this journey and you may wonder what could have been good about the trip to Honduras? What could have been so profound?

I was moved by the living reality that God is present in the lives of the people in the midst of the contrasts. At the Cathedral we met hundreds of happy young people in the Cathedral School and on Sunday we joined the hope filled Christians in singing God’s praise, offering the Eucharist and being about the mission of the Church even in the midst of challenges and overwhelming need. We visited a home for children living with AIDS run by volunteers who distribute what medicines they get to these innocent little children who have no idea what is wrong with them. These women give their time and money to buy food and other necessities. We saw shy smiles, bright eyes and children who needed love and had love to give. We heard giggles and laughter and singing and we gave hugs, received hugs and said silent prayers as these blessed children shared their home with us.

At two hospices we met those dying from AIDS. It was not a pretty sight but the Sisters of Charity and others who run those homes go about their ministry with love and mercy, gentleness and joy. And those who live and die there have a home.

It made the heart glad to go into one of the tent cities where thousands of people live in one room tarpaulin shelters side by side by side. In each of those homes there was a mattress given by the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras so that people would not have to sleep on the ground. Despite the fact that these people have absolutely no privacy and the little children play in the stream that carries away garbage and waste, each home has a simple water purifying system made of two five gallon plastic buckets - a gift from the Bishop of Honduras. And as we walked through that crowded camp with children running behind us and mothers and fathers shaking our hands they all cried “Monsignor Frade, Obispo Frade.” Their eyes were bright and their faces bore smiles and they have hope because the Church has given them signs that things will be better.

In the countryside we saw where children of a village go to school under a huge tarpaulin shelter - a school operated and financed by the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras. Along the river trail we saw a large community water purifying system and on the side a sticker with an Episcopal shield and the address and telephone number of the Diocese of Honduras. In that same village Mennonite Christians have joined in solidarity with the men of the community to make concrete blocks and build 66 beautiful block houses where children will have separate bedrooms from their parents and future floods and hurricanes will not take such a toll because the houses are strong and build up on pylons.

At “Our Little Roses”, a home for girls under the patronage of Diana Frade, the bishop’s wife, we saw a beautiful facility funded by Episcopalians from around the United States. The girls took the hands of each Commissioner and gave us a tour of their home - bright and beautiful and cheery. We met a beautiful two year old girl diagnosed with HIV, and she lives with her other “sisters” there - because this is her home and they love her. A beautiful chapel, inviting classrooms and soon to be finished bed and breakfast accommodations for visitors from the United States who want to come and help with this mission and others are all part of this wonderful facility. They were spared major damage by Hurricane Mitch, but just over the wall one sees squalid poverty and homes created from whatever could be salvaged after the wind and water.

Many kind people assisted us in our visit to Honduras. Dr. Edgar Umana, an Episcopal layman and champion for the cause of medical help for all who suffer from HIV/AIDS considers this his ministry. Fr. Leonel Blanco, Bishop Frade’s assistant in charge of Episcopal schools in the Diocese is now undertaking a new housing ministry which will provide good, stable, inexpensive homes for many who have been dispossessed. His old computer died while we were there. Can we help with a new one? Perhaps. There were two lovely young teen-agers who served as our translators, and those who volunteered their services to transport us on our visits. They all gave cheerfully. They all shared joyfully.

Honduras ~ a land of contrasts: A vacation spot with luxurious hotels and fine homes on the mountainsides, and down in the city tens of thousands of homeless, poverty stricken children of God living in tarpaulin shelters, never having quite enough to eat and no privacy whatsoever. The profound and desperate poverty and the sad realities of a developing nation eat into your soul, but the smiles and hugs, the laughter and singing and the presence of the Church in the midst of that despair gets into your heart. It certainly got into mine.

The harvest is ripe and plentiful but the laborers are few. The need is so great and those whose hands serve as the hands of Jesus are so few. There, in San Pedro Sula, as in South Africa and Belize, Uganda and Guatemala, and so many other places in the world God’s People are about the mission and ministry of the Church and not too concerned about maintenance and mortar. God teaches us in so many ways and God loves in all ways.

Some things just really get into your heart.