Woman of strength


"I will not give up!"

August 1, 2010
Mugumu, Tanzania

In the Imara health clinic in Mugumu Tanzania, there is a painting of the John 8 gospel story of the woman caught in adultery.

In this particular painting, all of the characters are African, and unlike my preconception, the woman's head is held high. She is a woman of strength, forgiven by Jesus.

There is another woman of strength in the Imara health clinic and her name is Mary Tumbo. Diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the mid-90s, Mary was abandoned by her husband.

But sitting under a tree one way, Mary and two other women decided they could help other women in their community who were dying of HIV/AIDS. They began visiting with these women and doing what needed to be done to help them die with dignity.

Not too much later, both of Mary's friends also died of AIDS, but Mary was not deterred. "I will not give up," she said.

Today, the Imara health clinic serves more than 600 clients who are living with HIV/AIDS or who are children whose parents have already died. Mennonite Central Committee has partnered with Imara for more than 20 years.

Mary Tumbo, now called Mama Benja, is responsible for home-based care. Each day, she travels many kilometers to visit women and children who are not able to come to the clinic.

On a Sunday afternoon in early August, I traveled with Mama Benja and Imara executive director Micenzo to meet some of the families she works with. The first woman we visited, Neema, who is also HIV positive, now cares for five children alone after her husband died of AIDS a number of years ago.

Neema is also a volunteer who visits other women like her who need help. Neema says she'd have died years ago without Imara's help of healthcare, medicine, food and more. She says she wants to continue to be healthy for as long as possible so she can care for her children.

Neema says the stigma and discrimination of HIV/AIDS is not as great as it once was. "People no longer point at me," she tells us.

Both Mary and Neema are part of a group of women at Imara who are called Group of Hope. Each week about 150 women gather together for Bible study, conversation and a meal.

Imara is the only health clinic in the region providing care for people with HIV/AIDS. Imara, say Micenzo and Mary, is like one small light in a very large area of darkness.

The incidents of HIV/AIDS in this part of Tanzania are decreasing faster than in other parts of the country. The work of Imara is certainly a contributing factor.

"I will not give up," Mary Tumbo declared when it would have been very easy for her to do so. Mary, Neema and many others like them are women of strength, showing us what it means to follow Jesus.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has ...
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente...
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family inclu...
Read more