Through this kind of preaching, it is said the stigma, of HIV/AIDS found a strong place to grow in the national psyche. Due to the credibility of the men and women of the cloth it became difficult to the dispel myths and stigma of the pandemic, which they had allegedly drummed into the people.
However the new gospel seeks to see the church as a stakeholder with an important part to play in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
In 2001, Christians in Francistown resorted to tackling the problem head-on, and the Francistown Christian Response Network (FCRN) was formed. The founding Christian members came from different churches to offer an alternative HIV/AIDS intervention voice that would complement the efforts of the already established mainstream bio-medical and other approaches to the pandemic.
“The centre is non-profit making and non-governmental. It operates under the auspices of Botswana Christian AIDS Intervention Programme (BOCAIP) through donations and voluntary participation. It is a structure that mirrors the realisation of the church’s role in the HIV/AIDS fight among Christians. The centre is run by a management team that comprises pastors and church leaders in the city,” reveals the centre’s coordinator, One Morapedi.
According to Morapedi the centre’s principle is to mobilise the Christian community towards the reduction of HIV/AIDS through the provision of psychosocial and spiritual support to both the infected and affected. Another objective is the attempt to work towards prevention of further transmission of HIV through the promotion of abstinence from premarital sex and faithfulness in marriage.
“We are a Christian organisation and this is clearly reflected in our approach to the prevention of HIV. We only advocate for abstinence and faithfulness in marriage. This is our area of specialty as far as prevention is concerned. It is our strength through which we complement other stakeholders’ efforts out there,” she adds.
The centre offers counselling services to approximately 137 visitors each month in the city on such diverse fields as HIV/AIDS, spirituality, family, marriage, bereavement and trauma counselling. She further reveals that they have another form of counselling known as on-going supportive counselling, for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families through home visits with the requisite permission of the patients. The centre also helps in offering psychosocial support to orphans and vulnerable children.
“We also help in identifying orphans and vulnerable children. We help to facilitate communication between mother and child, especially where their relationship is made difficult by the sickness. At times the parent cannot provide for the child because she/he is too ill to work. We have been trying hard to raise funds for our orphan care programme so as to help orphans through forums such as life camps. This is a place where we can give them life skills and teach them to be assertive through such methods as play therapy to facilitate confidence and trust development in these children. They need to learn to trust humanity to help them, even in the absence of their parents,” she says.
The centre recently started the group counselling sessions for people living with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. It is a forum that helps them to discuss their challenges and how to forge ahead and live positively. Morapedi says that they have achieved their objective of bringing together Christians of different denominations in the city. The Christian community has helped with volunteers who not only help manually in the centre but also come forward with material support, prayers and market the institution to potential sponsors.
“We have so far not been able to offer material support to our clients. We have been receiving help from African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP), all along, but our contract with them has since expired. We need to find ways of sustaining the centre and managing to give our counsellors allowances. We however have support from Coping Centre for People living with AIDS (COCEPWA) and District Multi-Sectoral AIDS Committee (DMSAC). We also get referrals from other stakeholders in the field,” she discloses.
