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Gaborone, Botswana
Botswana workers train counsellors to help those affected by AIDS


When Ray and Sharon Dirks first went to Botswana in 1996, they had no idea that in less than five years their ministry would be consumed by a disease of epidemic proportions.

The couple, from Ontario, went to Botswana as workers with the Commission on Overseas Mission under the auspices of Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission, and joined the Mennonite Ministries Botswana in June, a joint effort of AIMM and Mennonite Central Committee.

Rudy, who grew up as a missionary kid in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), is an experienced marriage and family counsellor and worked as Bible teacher with African Independent Church leaders. Sharon, who has a background in psychology, social work and teaching English as a Second Language, taught at the Naledi Adult Education Centre, an alternative school for children and adults.

It soon became apparent that the disease was taking a terrible human toll on sub-Saharan Africa. In Botswana, a county of under 2 million where up to a third of the adult population between 15 and 50 is HIV-positive, everyone is either “infected or affected”.

Recently, Rudy helped launch the Tshepong Counseling Network with the goal to have trained counsellors available in all of the city’s clinics and at a drop-in location. Tshepong (which means “trust”) counsellors will deal mainly with issues surrounding HIV and AIDS, from a Christian perspective, but are available for other counselling needs as well. Currently, there are nine Tshepong counsellors working in four of the city’s 16 clinics. The drop-in centre opened in May.

Sharon, who no longer teaches at the Naledi school, hopes to begin seeing clients who come for long-term counselling and work with Rudy to supervise the Tshepong counsellors. She would also like to spend time visiting clinics where there is currently no Tshepong counsellor, to encourage them to hire one. She now spends one long day (about 12 hours) a week seeing clients. Many of these are pregnant women referred under the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program, called MTCT. This helps the woman and her infant get access to AZT and other services if the woman first submits to AIDS testing and at least one counselling session.

The typical walk-in is female and worried she might be HIV-positive, Sharon says. “They’ll say, ‘I don’t trust my boyfriend’ or ‘I have some symptoms’, or that they’ve been drinking a lot and/or sleeping around. If they’ve had an AIDS test, we look at the possibilities.”

Counselling from a Christian perspective is appropriate whether the AIDS test is negative or positive, she says. “There is plenty of opportunity to teach healthy Christian sexuality regardless of test results,” she says. “But sometimes it comes before the test results come back, when we’re talking about the possibilities, and I ask, ‘How will your community – your church – help and support you?’”

Young Botswana women often face great pressure from their families to have children, while at the same time it is difficult for couples to get legally married since the “bride-price” costs for the men are so high. The result: pregnant single women, single-parent families and a higher risk for infection with HIV.

There is also a lack of respect for marriage. Companies or even the government will transfer employees to branches across the country with no regard for marriage or a family. To refuse such a transfer is to lose a chance for advancement. Couples end up living hundreds of miles apart, which puts great pressure on them to remain faithful to each other.

Given the sexual practices and the overwhelming numbers of HIV-infected people and AIDS orphans, a Christian counselling network with fewer than a dozen counsellors seems to be facing frightening long odds of making a difference. Yet the Dirkses have hope in a God who can work in any situation, no matter how seemingly hopeless.

The Dirkses also have taken on two projects. One is working with a small group of youth (in Botswana this can mean up to age 30 or more) at a church, discussing issues such as self-esteem, communication, family issues, love, sexuality and Christian marriage. The other project is a married couples fellowship. The couples range in age from early 30s to mid-60s.

“In a country where there is so much pain relating to promiscuity and broken relationships, this opportunity to strengthen Christian marriages is exciting,” Rudy says. “There is so much potential in this [married couples] group and we look forward to the day when not only have they grown in their own marriages but they can share what they have learned with other couples as well.”

“This work [with the youth and the couples] is our way of looking at the future, the possibility of saving a few,” says Sharon. “And we hope for the ripple, when each of these affect a few others, and so on.”

In September 1996, Botswana President Masire made a public appeal to the churches of his country to join the national battle against HIV and AIDS. Many organizations, Christian and otherwise, began working to respond to this call.

The Tshepong Counseling Network was launched March 7, 2001 that drew 300 people. In attendance were representatives from many churches, non-governmental organizations, clinics and the government, including the Minister of Health Joy Phumape.

 – adapted from a report by Melanie Zuercher

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Last modified October 29, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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