TESTIMONY

THE GREATEST HOPE
The story of Vicky, an AIDS victim given
hospitality at the Meeting Point

My name is Vicky. I am 42 and I come from the eastern region of Uganda. I want to thank you and God for the precious life that He has given me. In 1992, when I found out I was pregnant with Brian, my last child, my husband gave me the choice of giving up the pregnancy and remaining his wife, or separating from him if I wanted to keep the child. At the time, I only had two children, and I decided to carry on with the pregnancy, a choice that marked the end of my relationship with him. I truly couldn’t understand why he was so cruel and unyielding. Then, in 1997, when I lost my job because of sickness and, at the same time, my son Brian manifested the initial symptoms of tuberculosis, I began to have my first suspicions. The next year, I got worse. In the Nsambiya hospital, I was examined and tested for AIDS and showed up HIV-positive. That was when I understood why my husband hadn’t wanted the pregnancy with Brian, because back then he had known that he was HIV-positive.
Life at home with my three children became even more difficult. The two older boys were healthy, but we didn’t have enough money for school. We didn’t have food or money for medicine and, worst of all, we didn’t have love from anyone anywhere in the world. I really didn’t know whether God existed. In 2001, someone directed me to the International Meeting Point, where I encountered women with such joy on their faces, even though they also were sick with AIDS, that I found it hard to believe. They danced and were glad, and I wondered how anyone with this disease could sing and dance. At the Meeting Point, they welcome all with music and songs from different peoples–African, European, and Indian. I even heard some from my own tribe. I saw a glimmer of light shining on my ruined life, so I began spending time with them.
An important thing I’ll never forget is the day someone looked at me with a gaze shining with hope and love. In all the time I was bedridden, all my friends, relatives, and even neighbors looked at me and my children with rejection and contempt. This gaze of love and hope showed me something that brought life to my spirit and my ruined body. It told me, “Vicky! You are of worth, and your worth is greater than the weight of your sickness, greater than death.”
In 2002, I began buying medicine for my child, who was on the verge of death, after taking him out of school because of the seal of discrimination they’d set on him: they’d nicknamed him “skeleton.” In 2003, I began buying medicine for myself as well. I weighed 99 pounds, and now I weigh 165. Now Brian is truly healthy, and has begun going back to high school. My oldest son is attending the university, and the second is in the fourth year of high school. Where is the power of death? It is in the loss of hope and the lack of love. Now I am a volunteer at the Meeting Point, and every time I receive people I tell them that the value of life is greater than that of the virus they carry within their bodies. This affirmation nurtures the hope of people who are suffering and about to die, and brings them back to life. All these results have been possible because I have taken on the garment of something beyond death–in particular, love. I want to thank all the people who have educated us, even if we’ve never met them in person. Today, in the name of Fr. Giussani, Fr. Carrón has come among us who were poor and forgotten; who is richer than us now? We are the richest people in the world, because someone has brought a smile to the face of at least one person. Please thank all of them, so dear to us, and tell them that we love them.