Sometimes you are confronted with ignorance that leaves you speechless!
At Home Group we were discussing an upcoming Besom project. Besom is a charity that helps to bridge the gap between those who want to give time, money, things or skills and those who are in need.
The guy we’ll be helping in a couple of week’s time is a widower whose wife just died from AIDS. He and his son are not coping very well.
Well, as you can imagine we were all excited, me especially because I feel as a church we need to be out there in the community helping people, instead of hiding in our ‘holy huddles’
Martin has health and safety concerns about the HIV
???
Apparently, he once had to turn down an application from a student who wanted to join his martial arts academy that had Hepatitis B, because he discovered that this could be transmitted by contact of any bodily fluid, including sweat. He concluded,
“We just don’t know enough about HIV and how it is transmitted.”
Huh?
Maybe it is because I’m from Uganda where there is an ongoing public awareness campaign about HIV. But you’d have thought that a 40+ year old, middle class Briton would not be so ignorant.
So what is he really saying? That we shouldn’t help or interact with this guy because he might have HIV?
Anyway, it’s not like as if we will be exchanging body fluids with the guy or his child? The most we’ll do is probably clean, paint and decorate- hardly the type of activity that would expose us to the virus. We wasted about 20 minutes of valuable house group time addressing this ‘issue’. There was talk about protective clothing, masks, gloves etc! All the time I was thinking “What the fuck!”
I told them
“I don’t know about any of you, but I will not be wearing protective clothing against HIV. I have interacted with people who have HIV. I have hugged them, and I don’t think I’ve got it. But if I do, then ya’ll at risk because at some point I have hugged and kissed you!”
Can you imagine how the guy would feel if we all turned wearing anti-contamination suits?
I was soooo upset!!!
