After living here for two years while working for CRS, it’s good to be back in South Africa. Some of the faces I knew from here have moved on — aid work is a very transitory profession — but some are still here, and it’s been good to catch up this week when we could.

Despite my time here, I never quite get used to the contrast in South Africa. A trip through the fancy shopping districts of Sandton or Rosebank is a glimpse of Europe, or America, as well-dressed urbanites in BMWs or Mercedes chase the gold, in its new iterations, that first brought hopefuls flocking to Johannesburg, the Gold Reef City, in the mid-19th century.

But South Africa has the second-highest wealth disparity in the world — second only, I think, to Brazil — and for most South Africans, such wealth is simply unimaginable. Not far from the million-dollar homes and properties of Johannesburg’s wealthy suburbs, informal settlements sprawl across the dusty winter landscape, their tin roofs rusting from age and neglect. It is here that the face of South Africa’s greatest crisis — the HIV pandemic — is most readily visible.

With more than 5.5 million of South Africa’s 44 million citizens infected with HIV, South Africa had, until last year, the highest generalized HIV infection rate anywhere in the world. Though overtaken now by Swaziland — a small country ravaged by HIV and AIDS within the borders of South Africa — you need not look far to see the impact of HIV and AIDS in places like Orange Farm, an informal settlement of about 1.5 million people southwest of Johannesburg. I spent the day there today with CRS staff, speaking with patients who are receiving antiretroviral medications (ARVs) provided by CRS through the Inkanyezi Clinic.

In total, CRS is supporting more than 12,000 people in South Africa with these powerful drugs, which inhibit the ability of the HIV to hijack healthy immune-boosting cells within the body. As always, I was astounded by the stories of recovery I heard and saw this week, like that of Michael Baloyi, who I met yesterday at another CRS-supported ARV site. Ravaged by AIDS-related illnesses, Michael, aged 31, weighed just 70 pounds when he was admitted to the Holy Cross Home. His CD4 count, a measure of the immune-boosting cells in one milliliter of blood, was nine. By comparison, that of a healthy person would be around 1,000. For all intents and purposes, Michael was dead.

But ARVs brought him, and thousand of others, back. Sitting tonight in a clean, quiet hotel outside of Johannesburg, I already feel 1,000 miles away from stories like that. Heralded as a success story for making the peaceful transition from white rule under apartheid in the early 1990s, I see South Africa today at a crossroads. The next generation, and the one after that, will determine which South African reality will prevail — the wealth of the few, or the poverty and disease of the many. In the faces of those now receiving ARVs, you see the hope for a future many believed they’d once lost. Maybe that is as good an analogy as any for the country itself.

David Snyder has traveled to more than 30 countries with CRS, working in such crisis zones as Pakistan, Sudan, Angola, the West Bank, Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The book won’t hit the shelves until September, but a website is already up and running. Solidarity Will Transform the World: Stories of Hope from Catholic Relief Services is a collection of testimonies by the people served by CRS. It was written by Jeffry Korgen, the director of social ministries for the National Pastoral Life Center in New York.

The stories in Solidarity Will Transform the World highlight the lives of people in the developing world and the fight against poverty and injustice. Through these accounts, Korgen explores issues like immigration, HIV and AIDS, and peacebuilding.

Solidarity Will Transform the World will take you on a journey to visit the lives of people in Mexico, Zambia, India, Rwanda, and Nicaragua. Read about people in Mexico who are making a better living through Fair Trade coffee and microfinance programs, or about Zambians who through the miracle of antiretroviral drugs have been given a chance at living with HIV and AIDS and who now fight for the lives of their fellow countrymen.

Visit http://storiesofhope.crs.org/, the official website for the book, to read excerpts from all five chapters. The site also contains multimedia about CRS projects around the world — and will soon feature lesson plans and study guides for use of the book in classrooms.

CRS Lesotho is mentioned in a front-page article in today’s edition of The Baltimore Sun. The article is written by Scott Calvert, the Sun’s Africa correspondent, who knows CRS well. He visited CRS World Headquarters in Baltimore in 2004 and was briefed by several members of our staff prior to taking his Africa post.

In Africa, the road to aid is in the sky
Religious mission flies its planes to remote spots carrying medical personnel, HIV drugs, supplies

By Scott Calvert, Sun Foreign Reporter - July 19, 2007

BOBETE, Lesotho - The flight to this remote mountain village went smoothly until the very end, when a flock of sheep decided to run onto the grassy airstrip - straight into the path of a rapidly descending Cessna 206 Turbo.

“Dumb sheep,” growled pilot Tim Vennell. Maneuvering quickly, he kept the single-engine plane aloft 150 feet farther than usual, something he’d rather not do on a strip just 1,800 feet long and nearly a mile and a half above sea level.

Seconds later, the six-seater landed, and out hopped a nurse and two trainers for caregivers of the terminally ill. And so, Vennell’s Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship once again did its part in a growing battle against the HIV/AIDS scourge in this battered southern African nation.

The religious fellowship has become a vital link in a new quest to improve health care for rural villagers cut off by poor or nonexistent roads. Their impoverished isolation is especially acute now, with snow painting the alpine landscape white and temperatures dropping below freezing.

The five red-and-white Cessnas transport doctors, nurses, anti-retroviral drugs for HIV, blankets, coal, food and any other supplies that can fit, including, once, live pigs. And they evacuate patients with emergencies to the capital, Maseru.

In short, the planes make possible the health project recently launched here by Partners in Health, a secular medical charity in Boston that works in rural areas of Haiti and seven other countries. The planes also make possible a support program for 2,000 AIDS orphans being led by Catholic Relief Services, which is based in Baltimore.

To read more of this article, visit The Baltimore Sun’s website (www.baltimoresun.com).

Lane Hartill, the CRS regional information officer for West Africa, visits with Ngozi Nwega and her family. Photo by CRS staff.

I’ve never hugged anyone with HIV. That all changed when I met Ngozi.

Ngozi Nwega lives down a dirt alley in a two-room concrete apartment in Benin City, Nigeria. When I entered her living room with HIV outreach workers from the health unit at the Archdiocese of Benin City, she was barefoot and smiling. She curtsied to me, showed me to the faded couch, and walked over and turned down the volume on the TV. The Curious George cartoon was much too loud.

Ngozi sat down next to me and poured her heart out: a forced marriage at 15, a husband who died after contracting HIV, a family that rejected her. Two of her children died soon after they were born. She became desperately ill. Nkechi, her oldest daughter, quit school to take care of her. Ngozi’s new husband – who paid for medical bills after she became ill – tried to strangle her, saying she would die anyway.

Ngozi told me this with the relaxed tone of someone reading the ingredients on a can of soup.

We’d only been there 10 minutes when the electricity cut out. The overhead fan stopped. And I started sweating. The room grew thick with humid heat. Perspiration poured down my back. This, I thought to myself, is what Ngozi and the kids sleep in every night.

“The man returned me to my parents,” she continued. “On the way to the village, it’s a miracle I didn’t die. When I got to the village, everyone ran from me. Even my father ran away.”

The stigma of HIV is high in Nigeria. Many believe it’s a death sentence.

Maybe it was the heat. Or maybe the rush of memories overwhelmed her. But Ngozi lost it. She cried into her blue wraparound skirt, each memory pushing out more tears. But she refused to stop telling her story. It was a testimony, she said. It was cathartic, I thought.

But then she found the Archdiocese of Benin City. CRS supports their health unit and the team that works with HIV-positive Nigerians and their children. Vivienne, an outreach worker through the archdiocese, came to Ngozi’s house and gave her rice and beans. She took the kids to the zoo. She made sure the children’s school fees were paid. And that the mosquito net was hung and Ngozi takes her antiretroviral drugs.

We walked outside her apartment and all piled onto the decaying couch. I put my arms around Ngozi and her family. I couldn’t believe that this smiling, resilient woman next to me, this woman who is my own age, had lived through all this. I couldn’t believe she shared such an intimate story with me.

Lane Hartill is Catholic Relief Services’ regional information officer for West Africa. He is currently traveling in Nigeria.

First Lady Laura Bush meets with clients of Chreso Ministries clinic, an HIV center sponsored by CRS’ AIDSRelief consortium.

‘You Need to Give Them Hope’ — One small, bright spot in the fight against HIV

U.S. First Lady Laura Bush swept through Chreso Ministries, one of the HIV clinics that Catholic Relief Services supports in Zambia, this afternoon. It was a blisteringly quick visit that ended in an hour. But by shining a spotlight on one clinic that is bravely facing an incomprehensibly large disease, she reminds the world that there is indeed good news to tell about the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

There is no hiding from the bad news here: Nearly 16 percent of Zambia’s population is HIV-positive. On the ground, that means most people are affected by the disease — either they have the virus, or friends or family members do. It is a painful everyday reality. In the past, a diagnosis was a death sentence, so people hid from the pains, the infections and the sores that covered their bodies. Stigma was too great and the reality was too difficult to manage.

But there is good news here too. At places like Chreso, free antiretroviral medications are turning around people’s lives. HIV has become chronic, instead of deadly, making people more likely to talk about the virus and face it head on. The change is palpable.

In 1996, Chreso’s executive director, Helmut Reutter, noticed how many people in his Lusaka-based church were seriously affected by – or dying of – HIV and AIDS.

“We couldn’t just keep quiet, or deny the fact of HIV,” said Reutter, who named the clinic after a Greek word for “need.” “We discovered the greatest need of our time, that being HIV and AIDS.”

Chreso started small, a voluntary counseling and testing center run from a tiny church office. But the ministry’s aspirations were larger, and Reutter and his colleagues looked for opportunities to expand their reach. CRS’ AIDSRelief consortium received a large grant from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2004. Chreso, supported by Children’s AIDS Fund, then had the opportunity to scale up the clinic’s work, and leapt at the chance.

Two years later, some 5,700 Zambians receive free medicine or other care from Chreso. Two overflowing waiting rooms are testament to the ongoing need, but atmosphere is relaxed. A mother nurses her baby. A patient calls to a visitor from across the room, cracking a joke. A receptionist smiles as another client walks in.

Paul Macek, CRS Zambia country representative, talks with Jenna Bush.

“We don’t have posters on the walls saying ‘AIDS Kills,’ because people know that anyway,” Reutter said. “You need to give them hope that there is an answer to this situation.”

That type of hope is what drives people forward here. That’s the good news that Mrs. Bush heard during her visit and will help spread, simply by being here. It is a tough story to tell, as the bad news often seems to outweigh the good. Around the world, the number of people testing positive for HIV continues to rise. But so does the number of bright spots – places like Chreso, believers like Reutter, programs like PEPFAR.

“We are a faith-based organization, and we know that God has an answer,” Reutter said. “People’s lives have been turned around.”

This dispatch was filed by Hilary Roxe, CRS communications officer for Africa. She was in Zambia during Mrs. Bush’s visit to Chreso Ministries on Thursday afternoon.

For more information about the First Lady’s visit, read the CRS press release.