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HOUSTON NATIVE Mary Wood teaches the biblical ABCs of preventing AIDS in a rural Swaziland school.
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Houston woman teaches ABCs of AIDS in Swaziland
___By Sue Sprenkle
___International Mission Board
___MBABANE, Swaziland--The young girl sits listening intently to the guest speaker. A boy sitting behind pulls her ponytail. She turns to make a face at him and then adjusts the beaded band holding the yarn ponytail in place.
___If her father found out a boy touched it, she could get in big trouble. As long as she is wearing the blue and yellow headpiece, boys and men are not supposed to touch her.
___The ponytail, known as umchwasho, looks like a large tassel connected to a strand of beads. It announces to all that she is a virgin. The band requires girls to abstain from sex or from even kissing someone of the opposite sex.
___The age-old Swazi custom has been reinstituted in hopes of quashing the HIV/AIDS pandemic. International Mission Board missionary Mary Wood hopes the umchwasho works as a reminder to save sex for marriage, but she knows this symbol alone will not stamp out the deadly vir
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MBABANE, Swaziland, looks like many other modern cities. But underneath the modern exterior lies a silent killer, HIV/AIDS. In this country of 900,000 people, more than 340,000 are estimated to be infected with the HIV virus.
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us.
___Wood, a member of Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, spends her days promoting God's way of preventing HIV/AIDS in schools, hospitals and churches.
___The retired nurse left Houston to minister to people suffering from AIDS in Southern Africa after hearing how AIDS was wiping out an entire generation of Africans. What she found in Swaziland was not exactly what she expected. In the news, AIDS in Africa is shown as emaciated people just wasting away in the hospital.
___"It's kind of strange that you don't see people like that here," Wood said. "So many have HIV, and you don't even know it."
___You don't see it in the streets or homes. Yet all the United Nations reports say HIV is here. This small kingdom has so much of it that Swaziland is ranked second among all African countries.
___AIDS, nicknamed the "slimming disease" because of its vast weight loss, might be better named the "hidden disease" in Swaziland. Everyone knows there is HIV here. Street vendors talk on and on about the problem, yet none seems to personally know someone with the disease. They say, "Everyone here is healthy looking."
___Looks can be deceiving, though.
___"Most people think if you're HIV positive, you must be skinny and look like a walking ghost," one youth said. "But that's not true. I have had HIV for two years, and I look j
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THE YOUNG Swazi girl wears the traditional umchwasho to let all know she is a virgin and no one of the opposite sex must touch her.
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ust like my peers."
___Statistics show almost 43 percent of Swazis between the ages of 29 and 20 already are HIV positive. More than 25 percent of youth under the age of 20 also test positive for HIV.
___AIDS is a problem on the rise. While observers cannot see the drastic physical changes at first glance in this small country of 900,000 people, they can see the social and economic problems related to the disease right off.
___There are orphans, widows and families struggling to survive and grandparents who are raising 10 or more grandchildren orphaned by the dreaded sickness.
___Everyone is aware of the problem, but no one deals with it or even recognizes it.
___"No one ever admits to it if they do know they have AIDS or HIV," Wood said. "But mainly, most people just don't know because they won't get tested."
___Government prevention campaigns tout the ABCs of AIDS prevention all over town. The signs urge citizens to "Abstain, Be Faithful and Condomize." Most never have heard of the biblical ABCs Wood teaches. She teaches to abstain, be faithful to your marriage partner and to follow Christ.
___Most health agencies never bring in the love of Jesus Christ as a way of prevention. But Wood believes this is the only way AIDS will be beat, that God is the only source of power to remain pure until marriage and during marriage.
___This is a message that breaks cultural customs.
___"They say 100 percent of girls have sex before marriage just to prove they are fertile," Wood explained. "It is also an accepted practice here for boys to experiment sexually. It's also acce
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MARY WOOD teaches to abstain, be faithful to your wife and follow Christ.
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pted practice for men to have mistresses."
___Wood spends a lot of her time visiting schools--especially high schools and middle schools--in hopes that the leaders of tomorrow will be the ones to break the silence.
___As a question-and-answer period begins, the youth ask if white people get HIV or not. The students sit silently, hearing every word Wood says.
___It's during these sessions where the massive burden of AIDS on this country is seen best. Every student in the room has a personal story about how AIDS has affected his or her own family. The stories are so commonplace they are almost never talked about except in rare cases like Wood visiting.
___When one student ventures to ask if it is true a person can get rid of AIDS by sleeping with a virgin, all ears perk up. Just last week, news reports spoke of a father with AIDS having sex with his infant daughter because the local witch doctor told him to. Child abuse such as this is common.
___"That's a good question," Wood answers. "It is a lie. If you are HIV positive and you give it to another person, you are killing that person. Once you have HIV, you can't get rid of it."
___She explains to the students over and over how an HIV virus is so small that millions can sit on the head of a pin, therefore thousands can seep through the smallest openings in condoms. Most are surprised when she tells them condoms are not 100 percent effective in preventing the spread of AIDS.
___"If I wanted to be rich, I would have stayed in America and invested in a condom company," she tells a group of middle schoolers. "But I care for you and don't want you to get sick. That's why I'm here to talk to you about HIV and answer any of your questions.
___"I'd like to see you change the fate of your country," she says. "With the strength of Jesus Christ, you have the power to do it."
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