All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [140]
I knew I would need all my tools on this trip, which promised to be every bit as challenging as the previous ones. As always, I would be visiting the at-risk, vulnerable populations, situated mostly in slums, brothels, and hospices. In the spring of 2006, there were an estimated four hundred thousand HIV/AIDS infections in Central America. Our goal was to prevent an explosion of new cases, understanding that migration patterns put large numbers across borders at risk of contracting HIV. In Guatemala, a key aspect of the challenge was cracking a taboo against condom use by men who thought it was somehow unmanly to use protection. This dangerous belief was reinforced by the Roman Catholic Church, to which 60 percent of Guatemalans belong, which officially condemns all “artificial” and modern forms of family planning, including condoms. Here and throughout Central America, the Catholic hierarchy is entwined with a macho culture that enforces gender inequality and severely constrains a woman’s reproductive autonomy. But, as I was about to witness, there are outposts of the Church, far removed from the decision makers in Rome, on the front lines of the battle against AIDS and the impoverished conditions that facilitate its spread.
Our military escort was waiting as our helicopter landed in a cow pasture on the edge of the town of Coatepeque. So were two Maryknoll nuns, Sisters Dee and Marlene, who were waving wildly and looking so sweet and gentle standing there next to soldiers in camo fatigues with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. But it turns out they are indeed warriors as fierce as any soldiers in a munitions army. Their weapons are love, compassion, service, devotion, hope, and faith, and I believe they are mightier. I have to. My own hope and sanity depend on it.
Coatepeque is a border town on Highway 1, which runs along the Pacific Coast of Central America, a major trade and smuggling route. Along with the traffic comes HIV, which is prevalent here in much higher percentages than in other parts of Guatemala. Sisters Dee and Marlene run Proyecto Vida (Project Life), a comprehensive care, testing, and prevention program in a region with very scarce services for people with HIV/AIDS.
Sister Dee, born Delia Marie Smith in Lancaster, England, is a stout, energetic woman with close-cropped red hair and a gentle, high-pitched voice. No wimples and habits for this nun; she wore stud earrings and was dressed in a T-shirt and slacks as she showed us around the facilities. It was a bare-bones operation in a run-down building in a town where the electricity goes off at least once a week. The narrow hallways were dark for a while this morning, but the staff was sunny and upbeat—all HIV-positive women who came to the sisters for care and stayed on to help. Sister Marlene, wearing a plain cotton skirt, was more reserved and stayed in the background during the tour, but she joined us when I yet again exploited the opportunity to ask beautiful, devout people to pray with me (one of my selfish trademarks!). Sister Dee started us off with a simple, gorgeous meditation about the nature of our work, reminding me that prayer doesn’t have to be verbally acrobatic. It’s just chatting with the God of our understanding. She said, simply, we are women gathered here to help people living with HIV, and indeed, that is what Proyecto Vida is all about.
She and Sister Marlene had more than seventy years between them with the Maryknolls, an order for which I have the utmost admiration. The Maryknolls’ mission takes them to some of the most precarious and forgotten locations, where they