Mariana

It truly amazed me that Mariana had walked across the busy highway in Chimoio to greet us as the bus randomly pulled to a stop to add water to the radiator. What she heard while lying sick in her mother's mud home was the singing of the women in the bus.  She recognized their engaging voices and the African worship songs and in spite of her weak legs, hurried across the highway to greet us.  I had no idea that in exactly two weeks I would be speaking at her funeral.

It was a most unique funeral.  Several of the dead were buried in the cemetery simultaneously.  The holes dug for the graves were three feet apart, several lined in a row.  The dirt dug from the earth was heaped high around each grave. It was expected that the person in charge of speaking position themselves at the head of each grave. So I gingerly made my way like a mountain goat terrified I would fall in one of the open graves. (I mentioned my fear of falling to my translator Simone but he quickly assured me that had I fallen he would have quickly rushed over and buried me!) It was quite an experience shouting the message on the mountain of dirt as the funerals to the left and the funerals to the right proceeded in the same manner. We were one of fifty funerals that day at the cemetery.

One only needs to walk into a Mozambican cemetery to get a wake-up call as to the daily devastation of AIDS and a host of other illnesses in this poverty-stricken country.  170 people were buried in one day in a cemetery in Beira.  The mass of sandy mounds in sizes from small to large screams the insanity of their ambiguity. As if insult to injury, the names on the homemade crosses soon wear off with the tropical weather. Yet each is not so easily forgotten by God.

I was thankful that Mariana had heard the women singing that day and decided to greet us.  It must have been an encouragement to her to see all of her friends from Dondo. None of us knew that she would soon hear singing again but not of this world.  I am thankful for the ministry of the Ray of Light to women with AIDS like Mariana who have the hope of eternity in their hearts to sustain them beyond the grave.