AIDS care kits being assembled by local mission
TEMPLE – Residents from western Maine are reaching across the world to provide comfort to people in South Africa dying of AIDS.
About 4.1 million South Africans, more than 10 percent of that country’s population, are infected with HIV, and between 600 and 1,000 people die in South Africa every day from AIDS-related complications.
To comfort some of them, people affiliated with the Mission at the Eastward, a group of nine small Presbyterian churches in western Maine, are making 50 health care kits to send to Macfarlan Presbyterian Church in Alice, South Africa. It is located in Eastern Cape Province.
The kits include dozens of items ranging from rubber exam gloves to cotton and gauze bandages to bedpans. They will be put in pillowcases tied with a blue ribbon, the color of hope for the Xhosa tribe, which dominates the region around the Macfarlan church.
Also included will be sheets handmade in South Africa by people who have AIDS.
Many of the kit items were donated by Franklin Memorial Hospital. Others were purchased with donations from parishioners and community members.
They will be shipped to South Africa by boat in January, and arrive in April at the Macfarlan church where they will be distributed by the Rev. Luzuko Qina and a nurse, who will explain to families how to use the items.
The items in each kit cost more than $30, but shipping costs upward of $50 a kit. The Mission at the Eastward is asking for donations to help defray these costs. People may make donations on behalf of others, who will receive holiday gift cards saying a donation was made in their name.
“We are doing this first of all for the practicality but secondly, for these people to know they weren’t forgotten and they weren’t stigmatized because they were suffering and dying,” said Babbie Cameron of Temple, who helped organize the drive to put the kits together. “There is no delusion that this is a cure. It’s just to make people more comfortable.”
Eileen Kreutz of Industry, who is also helping, said the items will allow people to set up a clean and safe place in their homes to take care of themselves and their loved ones. Many of the items will help make it more sanitary for family members to take care of their loved one who has the disease.
“The effort being made here in the Farmington area is one way of showing that these people are not entirely alone, although it must feel like that as they watch their loves ones die,” Kreutz explained.
Also included in the kits will be letters of support, handwritten by those involved in the Mission of the Eastward.
“You’re getting a lot more than just cotton balls,” Cameron said. “The largest good they will do is for these people to know that half a world away, someone cares.”
Mission of the Eastward has its office at the Fairbanks Union Church in Farmington. For more information, or to make a donation, contact Babbie Cameron at 779-1798.
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