SIDA!! .................................................................................

The latter years of our life in Burkina were punctuated by the world plague, SIDA (AIDS). Dad had treated every disease imaginable during his years as village doctor. Only one case of cancer that we remember, a young teenager who had cancer of the jaw. His old father brought him regularly on the back of his broken down bicycle and Dad treated the sores in his mouth. The child finally died. .  Other than that one case, we did not see cancer patients. But there were plenty of other dieases: tuberculosis, all the ordinary measles and mumps and chicken pox, tons of malaria in all stages, pneumonia, and the list goes on and on. Dad did what he knew how to do, asked other regular nurses for help in some instances and used up thousands of rolls of bandages, prepared by the women in the States, to cover the salve and sulfa powder he put on the horrible ulcers that were so prevalent in our area.

We have written about the young man, a pastor's son from Burkina, who was dying in an Abidjan hospital and we sent home on the train to die in peace. That was probably the first case of SIDA we recognized.  But the government health authoriities were very aware of this scourge and were trying to inform school authorities of the danger to young people indulging in sexual encounters with various partners, etc.  I was asked at one point by the Alliance school authorities to give some teaching to the junior high age kids from our area of town, so I prepared some lessons and held the classes in a Maranatha Institute classoom.  Robert Sanou also organized a team with our nurses to go to schools around town and into the bush to inform and educate young people of the dangers of SIDA.

About the same time, I had had an encounter with the Minister of Health in the country, and during a mission conference session in Ouagadougou he came at our invitation to speak to us as missionaries about the spreading disease and what to do.  I can still remember his one statement:  "You missionaries are the technicians of the soul!"  He knew that a change of heart and lifestyle was the only way to stem the terrible tide of SIDA and he encouraged us to help in this battle. 

We had so many sad experiences with friends who did not heed the warnings about promiscuous sexual activity, and ended up with SIDA.  One sad case was the son of old Moïse Traoré, an elderly well known Bwa Alliance pastor. He sent word to our house one day that he wanted to talk to Dad and could he come to his home?  He wanted me to come too as he could not express himself in French so wanted to talk in Jula and have me translate for Dad. So I was witness to the whole scene.  His son was  a high school graduate and had also graduated from Bible School, he was a young pastor at that time.  Old Moïse asked his son to sit in on the session, as we sat in a dusky little mud plastered room on little stools.  Some years before when Dad was field director Moïse had laid Dad out in lavendar about some situation concerning the Mission. He had lived with the conviction of what he had done and said at that time for many years, and he wanted to confess and make things right now as an old man. He wanted his son to be a witness to his sin and the confession and forgiveness of that sin. Dad readily forgave him, they prayed and hugged and the son was witness to it all.

The sad part of the story is that the son went on to be a pastor, but did not walk in the ways of his father.  He pastored in Ouagadougou and we kept hearing that he was ill and could not get over his sickness.  As he was on his deathbed we heard that the disease he had was SIDA, because of the immoral sexual contacts he had had. What a waste of a life that should have been lived for God.  These kinds of situations were what was hard for us in our ministry in Africa.

A young Mossi boy worked as a yardman for Tim Albright, and so the year we took over their house and CAMA work during their furlough, we got to know Pierre very well.  He was a bright, fun person and a good worker - he lived in a little house in our yard so we knew him well. Later he went on to Bible School and trained to be a pastor. He had a church in Ouagadougou.  But again, he succumbed to AIDS and died, still a young man.

Job, Pastor Simeon's son, was such a pathetic case. I went to visit him at Santidougou a couple times, but Dad went regularly. He would take him little food items that he craved and gave him a comfortable mattress to rest on as he was a bed ridden case.  Again, he became nothing but skin and bones and  finally succumbed to the dread disease. 

Another case was the daughter of church elder, Gédéon, in Bobo, a family I had known since I was a child.  Monique was a beautiful girl, got involved with an older man - not a Christian. Lived in Ouaga with this man and finally came home very sick.  I was at home alone (Dad was in the bush preaching) when Monique was brought to my door with two of her brothers - they were holding her up on a bike.  Her skin was almost too hot to touch, she was skin and bones, her eyes white in their sockets.  I quickly got her and the others into my little car and took off for the guard pharmacy,  it was a Sunday.  They gave her transfusions and sent us home. I arranged for the male nurse to go to their yard again to give her more transfusions, but it was too late for her - she too died a painful death.

Eli Sanou's brother, Samson, was a tall fine looking young man, well educated. His Dad had worked for my parents when I was a teenager and his mother was my girlhood friend so I knew the family well.  Samson went off to Ouaga to work in a job there. Like many, he fell into sexual promiscuity and he also died of SIDA. 

In our later years of ministry in Burkina, we lived in the city and we had local TV in our home. One evening we were watching the news and there was a young singer on the screen. He was an African, a Sanou, and he had the most beautiful voice, singing ballad type songs. I can still see him on that screen - they had him poling a boat down the Seine River in Paris as he sang his ballad.   He finally came back to Burkina, married and had a child. His wife was a beautiful, educated woman.  They were actually relatives of Pastor Prosper Sanou. Dad heard that this young man, Sintala Sanou, was very ill and he wanted to go and pray for him, asking Prosper to take him there. Dad said it was the most awful sight to see this young man (he was actually a Burkina Army officer) now lying on a grass mat on a mud floor wrapped in a scanty cloth - burning to the touch and his eyes rolled back in his head.  Again - SIDA!  He had a military funeral which Dad attended and the wife and daughter sponsored a musical event in a public garden in Bobo which Dad attended also.  Some time later the beautiful wife died - with the inevitable SIDA. 

We had a very dear friend, Soungalo Paul, who first came to study at Maranatha after he was saved and felt called to Christian ministry.  He married a good friend of mine, a Mossi young woman, and the two of them went off to Aibidjan to study at the FATEAC.  His level of education was much too high for Maranatha, and they seemed like such a promising couple for ministry.  We visited them in Abidjan - the Bobo students and we always got together down there and had long conversations about the church at home, etc.  Towards the end of their schooling, during summer vacation, Paul became very sick. Dad took him to a doctor and after examination they discovered that he had some kind of a blood disease. They checked him for AIDS but it was not that.  We were going to Ouaga for a few days to be with you folks, Clousers, and stayed out at the SIL guest house. Since we were going to be away, we arranged for Paul and Sita, his wife, to come and stay in our home while we were gone. I stocked the frig with nourishing food and we thought this would help him to recover a bit during the several days we were gone.  Paul became very sick and since my little car was in the garage Yakuba, Paul's friend and ours, called us in Ouaga and asked if they could take him in our car to the doctor. So we agreed and they did that.

One morning we had an early knock at our SIL room door - it was Steve, and he came with the terrible news that Paul had just died!  Well, we packed up immediately and took off for home.  What a sad situation. We were in the midst of mourning for days with people coming and going. I will never forget that funeral. Paul's body  was swathed in white cloth in an open casket, and Yabuba Hema stood right beside the casket looking at him the whole service. They had been such close friends. Paul had a marvelous conversion story, having been brought up to manhood as a Muslim, he was also well educated.  But he heard the Gospel and became a follower of Christ. We all had such hopes for his future in the ministry.  But God's ways are not always our ways, and we had to be content to say " Goodbye"  to our dear friend as he went to be with His Saviour in a place where there is no sickness or death. 

So we had many times of sadness in connection with SIDA.  No doubt the young population in Burkina has been decimated by this dread disease, as has happened in many countries of the world.