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Soft, silent tears rolled down the cheeks of an African bishop's wife. It was an evening of academic chatter at a university in Uganda, located on Lake Victoria, the lush land at the source of the Nile.
I was on a "peace and justice" mission for the Episcopal Church of U.S.A. to gather information about 2 million people killed in South Sudan as the Islamic government attempts to impose "sharria," or fundamental Moslem law, on all citizens, Moslem or not.
South Sudan is Christian, and there are constant bombings, slave trade of children and woman, sex trafficking and mutilations - all part of a brutal 35-year-old civil war.
Just to the south of Sudan, in peaceful Uganda, I was sitting beside Eunice, an African bishop's wife, having sweet, hot tea at the close of the evening.
I asked if AIDS had impacted her family.
"Three funerals this week," she said.
Burying the dead in Africa is a full-time job. One man, when asked what the West could do to help, reportedly answered, "Get me a backhoe and 10 years' worth of gasoline to bury my dead."
Sad but true, coffin making is a growth industry in Africa.
The bishop's wife went on to say her "baby sister" died of AIDS at Christmastime and left Eunice with her infant son, Daniel, now 3 months old.
Eunice doesn't know yet if the baby is infected. The doctors can't run tests until he is 6 months old.
At first, she said, she was sure he was infected. He even had skin problems. "But the skin problems have cleared up," she said with unmistakable hope.
That's when the soft tears fell. "I'm falling in love with him. I don't want him to die."
Eunice agreed to e-mail news of his health three months hence. On the long ride back to the Ugandan capital of Kampala on that hot, dark African night, Eunice's tears fell on my white cheeks. Africa was beginning to make an indelible mark on this American visitor.
AIDS is Africa's 21st century plague. Medicine and clinics desperately are needed, but politics, profits and poverty stand in the way.
Meanwhile, phase 2 of the pandemic is hitting: orphans. Currently there are 10 million orphans in Africa because of AIDS. Obviously, many are infected. By 2010, it is estimated there will be 44 million AIDS orphans in Africa. Let me paint the picture clearly. Forty-four million orphans equal the number of all elementary schoolchildren in the United States. Think of all our elementary schoolchildren parentless.
Right now, families - relatives and neighbors - are taking in orphans. At a meeting of about 15 Ugandan officials I asked how many had lost a family member to AIDS. Everyone raised a hand. Then I asked who had AIDS orphans at home. Again, everyone raised a hand.
One man has 12 orphans. It will only get worse. Some African countries have 40% HIV infection rates in the general population.
Uganda, however, is a role model. Unlike its neighbor to the west, Kenya, Uganda admits there is an AIDS pandemic and is fighting it head-on, acknowledging it is sexually transmitted and providing AIDS education, testing and clinics.
Uganda today is a democracy. Its official language is English, even though all of the 30-plus tribes teach their children their native dialects before the kids head off to English-speaking schools at age 3. School, by the way, runs from about 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. All schoolchildren wear uniforms. Although, there are hardly any books, the populace is relatively well educated, so there is hope for a future middle class.
Seemingly everyone has a cellphone, and cyber cafes are abundant and cheap.
African politics is a complicated, interwoven tapestry; no outsider should presume to have it figured out.
For example, not long ago, Uganda was suffering political turmoil under dictator Idi Amin. Ugandans often took refuge in Sudan to the north. Today, it's the other way around. South Sudanese come to Uganda to get away from their own war.
My group's primary purpose for visiting Africa was to talk to the Sudanese bishops who were meeting away from the war in Uganda. We taped the bishops' stories and will prepare a video for use at international peace and justice conferences around the world.
The bishops pointedly asked why America is quick to intervene in the former Yugoslavia and Kuwait but does not care about genocide of Christians in Sudan.
"Is it because we are so black?"
I had no answer other than to say, in my opinion, few people in America know anything at all about Sudan, let alone about the people's blight in the south.
They told us about the cathedral in Lui that was bombed by the Sudanese government along with a health clinic. "They want us to convert or die," the bishops said of their government.
The bishops did not ask for military intervention on behalf of the south. They asked for intervention to impose a cease-fire and allow roundtable peace talks.
"Arabs are not our enemy," the Sudanese bishop of Lui said. Rather, their goal is a secular government that allows people to worship or not worship as they please.
But time is running out. The South Sudanese are physically and mentally war-weary. The Lui bishop's wife is hospitalized in Kenya for a stress-induced stroke. Two of his daughters are incapacitated by war depression. The archbishop of Sudan fell to malaria the day after we met with him.
The Sudanese bishops believe their people could be wiped out this generation. "Other people have come and heard our stories. They have cried with us, as you have. Then they go home, and nothing happens." I cried again, knowing I am no better.
Back home, however, e-mails awaited me from my new extended family in Africa. There are schools and orphanages to which I hope to funnel books, money and supplies. There are two young computer experts who may obtain visas to come to America.
And then there's the bishop of Lui, a pacifist who fondly is called "Bishop Bullet," short for Bullin Dolli. He does not shoot bullets; instead he's the target.
Bishop Dolli wants people from around the world to brave the civil war and come to Lui. He's sure people, white and brown, will fall in love with his black flock.
He wants his cathedral and clinic rebuilt.
We talked about a worldwide campaign to send bricks for the renovations at Lui. If the whole world helps rebuild the cathedral and clinic, we thought, no government would dare bomb them again. But if it did, the world, through the rebuilding campaign, would have acquired eyes to see.
As it is now, Sudan is invisible and the world is free not to care.
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