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COMPASSION RESPONSE NETWORK CIRCULAR No 27
Compassion Response Network,
Australian Company Number 103 240 071
By David Keane, 29/July/2007
PO Box 582, Gosnells WA 6110, Australia
Email address: keane@nw.com.au
Website address: http://www.compassion-response.net/
Gathering in Kinshasa of 134 People with HIV
During a meeting in February 2006, a few people living with HIV in Kinshasa jointly declared,
"Yes, we are ready to serve humanity and to use the energy of goodwill to help us accomplish our objectives. As a group we want to come out of our AIDS patients misery, to organize a solidarity with the other AIDS African patients, and to make emerge a People's Movement of Africa."
In response, the first gathering of 50 people with HIV was held in Kinshasa in May 2006, at the time of the Wesak (Taurus) Full Moon. The priority urgent need expressed by the people with HIV was acute hunger. They wanted mainly to be able to borrow money so to kick-start employment for themselves. With support from CRN, we are establishing a community fund for micro-credit loans to be paid back in monthly installments once each has a job. Already the Community Fund has helped kick-start five vegetable growing sites, that are now productive.
The small community of 50 has been approached by many other people living with HIV. They are wanting to join the community so that their own lives can be transformed. They are starving and have many other needs. And so the group of 50 decided that "We must develop projects that provide income generating activities for a further 50 people living with HIV. We must solve the problem of feeding all community members so that none go hungry. And the people living with HIV must develop a constitution as a first step in establishing a charitable organisation to serve people living with HIV."
And so in response, CRN sponsored a gathering for 100 people living with HIV to meet on the day of the Gemini Full Moon, Great Invocation Day, Friday 1/June/2007. We would sponsor travel for the day, hiring of a hall and food and drinks.
Albert Mananga, our CRN coworker in Kinshasa reports his impressions of that gathering: "There was deep emotion, to hear the people living with HIV speaking of the deep sufferings of their lives, to hear them unveiling the depths of their lives."
"The 100 who had been invited arrived, and others uninvited also came. So we received an extra 34 people, making in all 134 people living with HIV. There was not any more room, others were standing behind the room because of lack of space, they were listening to what was happening from afar. From this moment we finally closed the entrance. Emotion and hope characterized the general atmosphere in the gathering."
"Before the group discussion commenced, everyone at the gathering held hands in a large circle (as is done for a Findhorn attunement). Then we all had a minute of silent meditation and prayer, attuning to divinity. The people living with HIV expressed themselves naturally. They discussed questions of sufferings, hunger, medical care, the need of jobs, the need of child schooling, and the global need to launch the People's Movement, yes the Vision Statement was affirmed! These elements are contained in the videos. The spiritual power mingled with the meeting, with the Christ Festival and the Invocation Day; the spiritual power pushed and elevated the gathering."
"The question was raised by some, why after two gatherings during 2006, were there apparently not enough positive results to their requests." (Part of the answer lies in the limited response of donations from the public in affluent countries, yet what small amounts were freely given, have been used exceedingly well, and thus amidst such extreme suffering and poverty, hope, courage and desire to serve have been born.)
At the gathering, the group was very interested in treatments for HIV/AIDS. Albert showed all the medical devices that had been gifted to the group; the zapper, colloidal silver maker, and Beck devices. Albert commented, "You cannot imagine what a joy and relief these devices provided for those present in the gathering. It is as though desperate people had found the solution suddenly to an insoluble problem, a solution for what they were seeking for years, without response, and all of a sudden there is the solution! I have been touched in my heart to hear a woman with HIV pushing a sigh of relief when these devices were presented!" In the two months since the gathering, three of the people with HIV have been meeting with Albert to learn to use these devices and now they are being used as a service of free treatment to the community. But how desperately this group needs a room of their own to become a regular point of contact with the needy! And once word of the effectiveness of these treatments grows, there will be need to expand the size of the public meeting place.
The group also prays constantly to discover which healing herbs can grow in tropical climates, so that the community can grow and provide these herbs free or cheaply to any who come. And seemingly in response to their prayers, in late July we have established contact with an NGO group Anamed, with contacts now in over 16 African nations, and they give seminars all over Africa on using natural herbs to treat diseases. There are already two Anamed contacts in Kinshasa, with whom we have just recently come into contact. Anamed is most interested in the healing power for HIV/AIDS of two herbs, artemisia tea with moringa leaf powder. We must await now to discover how the Kinshasa community uses this wonderful new knowledge.
Vision Statement and Projects
The Vision Statement and projects for the coming year as discussed by and agreed at the June gathering by the 134 people living with HIV:
The Vision Statement:
"To organize a solidarity with people living with HIV, and to help develop a People's Movement of Africa so to provide a charitable organisation through which the people living with HIV can come together, share and decide their most important needs, and develop and manifest projects to respond to their needs."
Projects for the Next Year
Our program is also to sustain a People’s Movement to support spiritual and practical needs of people living with HIV. Our urgent needs through our Vision Statement are:
Transcripts of Testimonies
At the Gathering of 134 people with HIV, many came forward to give personal testimonies. These testimonies, with translation to English, are recorded on a CD, and can be copied for anyone who is interested. The visuals are touching, but the sound is weak, a problem we do not know how to correct. There are 28 segments on the CD. The following transcripts list the segment number and the time in minutes of each segment.
1. (2:25 minutes): Prayer:
"God, we would like to thank you for today, because You have asked us to gather here. You are the God of people who have been abandoned, You see the sufferings of people who are suffering. Our meeting today, please help each of us here, please take care of each of us here, let our Movement go ahead, which will be known by every body in the world, so that people can also take this example. Let this Movement help also other people living with HIV, help also people who are in Australia so that they could be able to help this Movement, let it go ahead, we praise you by the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
2. (0:19) & 3. (0:26) Albert introducing the gathering:
I was speaking in "lingala", the local language, I recalled the objectives of the gathering as foreseen in the previous meetings of preparation.
4. (1:19) "My name is Bazimunina Batetela. Myself I was put away from my family, and other members of my family forgot me. I sleep in a Church. My life is a very difficult one, the children also have many problems, I am really living in many sufferings, I don't sleep on the bed, I sleep on the benches of the Church, no place for me to go sleep. Please help us because we are too much suffering. Sleeping in a church, you know, is not a very good place, sleeping on the bench with no bed, see the way we are and sleeping again outside, it is difficult to sleep outside because we are sick and on the benches of the Church it is really difficult, otherwise it is finished for us. Send us some beds, and if possible, you also come to visit us here, we need places for sleeping."
5. (0:44) (note: This is a girl pupil, her name is not heard clearly when she was speaking)
"I was going to school but I am not going to school any more. My father died, my mother died and there is no body to take care of me. Since I have been in touch with this disease HIV, no body takes care of me, that's why I am just like that. There is no body to help me, I am not going to school any more, that's why I need your help, please help us so that we can get healed. I thank you very much."
6. (1:14) "My name is Tuka Ntangu Edouard. I am a person living with HIV. We are too much suffering here. We have many problems. We had jobs but now that you know we have HIV, they put us out of the jobs, we are not working any more. We need Income Generating Activities. If we have some money, we can begin selling, we can manage to find something for the children to survive. Our children are not going to school, we are too much suffering here, the places we were renting houses we were put away. With your love we are sure that you will help us. Don't leave us down because we can die like that, we are too much suffering, we believe that you love us and you can do something."
7. (1:14) "My name is Kasa Bakambana Elysée. I am a person living with HIV. Since they discovered that I live with HIV, I have many problems, I don't eat well, and I have many problems. All the family has abandoned us, we are very much suffering, the children who should help us are not working, we don't have money to send them to school because we are also suffering."
8. (1:41) (Two woman with HIV testifying in the same segment)
"My name is Alfa. The life is difficult, my husband died, and now I am with the children. Since my husband died, my life is now very difficult, we have no place to be, we are sleeping outside, we are also very hungry, with the children there is nobody to help me. I need your help, please help us, help us because we are suffering, help us."
"My name is Umba Masenge. Since the death of my husband, I am really suffering, there is no way, I am always outside with the child. Because of this sickness, the family has put me away, please help me, even a living place to sleep, I am really suffering, there is no way, please help us maybe with medicines for living."
9. (1:01) "My name is Mambu Nzita. Since I have been in touch with this disease, I too much regret, please do your best to find us medicines. We are suffering for eating, we are really suffering, we are not sleeping well, we are sleeping outside. It is very difficult for us to survive. Please find a way, find a solution for us. We have children who are not going to school any more. The family has put us away since they knew we got this problem. We are always on the street, we are abandoned. Let God help you so that you could find the medicines and help us here. Thank you."
10. (1:01) "My name is Ange Mavula. I am a person living with HIV. We need medicines. We need drugs. We have many, many diseases. My case personally, I have many diseases in my body. I have no drugs, I have no medicines. Please help us with some drugs. Our legs are really hurting us. We have many problems. No ways for me to put shoes because my feet are really suffering, no way for me to make long distance with my foot. Please help us because we need medicines. We know that you exist, and we think that your love will help you to send us some money. May God bless you and also bless us. Thank you for your help."
11. (0:54) "My name is Matshola Sita Eugénie. Since I have been with this sickness, my husband heard and he left me. I have HIV and my child as well. The life I am leading now is very, very much negative. I have no sleeping place. The family has abandoned me, that's why I am asking you to help us, for aid, for help. The child I have is sick but is not eating very well. There is no school for the child, that's why we are asking you to be pity for us. Please be pity for us. Thank you."
12. (0:52) "My family abandoned me because I have this sickness. I am now sleeping in Churches. We are too much suffering. We have no sleeping place, we have no pots for cooking, we have no bag to put our clothes, we are suffering. We are suffering, no way for us to eat. We want you to come and see the way we are living here. Please come here and you will see how we are sleeping outside. We have no way to manage here. The children are not going to school, they are now street kids. Please come to see us and see how we are living."
13. (1:05) "My name is Mvemba Marceline. I am a widow and now I have HIV. Since the death of my husband, my children are not going to school anymore. We were renters before, and now we have no possibility of paying. Now we have been put away and we are sleeping in Churches, and we are too much suffering. Eating is difficult, with the sickness. Really we are much suffering here. We need drugs, we need aid, we need help. We need some possibilities for living, and sending our children to school. That's why we need you even to help for lodgement. Come to see how much we are suffering here. Please find us some medicines to finish this disease. Thank you."
14. (1:44) "My name is Christophe Moke. I am a person living with HIV. Then I am asking to you Australian people, people who have much money in Australia, please help us as you always do, but help us with the drugs, please help us also with food. Please help us to have an income producing activity. We want to gather all the people living with HIV, and live with them together, but we need your help. That's why I invite you to come here, and see how we are living, I shall also give you the opportunity of talking with you. If you want, you also invite us there we come and visit you, where you are in Australia. We need to go there and see you because you are helping us. Thank you very much. I stop there."
15.(0:24) "Finally I can't understand, then people who should find the medicines, they don't exist anymore or why? There is much money for research but they still find no solution. The drug is still not found. So we just die like that? All of us? Please God bless the one who will find the drug for this sickness. Thank you."
16. (0:43) (name not recorded on the CD) "I was working in a company, downtown. From the time I was discovered to have the sickness, they put me away from the job. My wife died. I stayed with six children. No way for me to raise my children. They are not going to school. As I am here, I live with my friends, with my children. If you have possibility, please help us, so that we could manage something in order to feed our children. We are really suffering. If possible come yourself to see how much we are suffering. Thank you."
17. (0:43) "Our Vision Statement is this: our need is to be together all of us, all people living with HIV. We need to have a regulation and a status. So that we can also help other people living with HIV around the world. They will follow our way of doing things. When you help us, and the way we will organise our NGO. If possible you put all the necessary means for us, so that our NGO could go ahead. And everybody will be happy. That's why we thank you very much."
18. (0:43) "My name is Nlandu Florentine. I am saying this: we, people living with HIV, we want to create a Movement here. Our goal to create that Movement is to help also the other people living with HIV around the world. That’s why we want your help in that Movement we are creating. Our will is to have a public place for beginning to make the field. We want to make the field, so even if we don't have much money but with that field we can make the plans, we can make the vegetables and sell and have some money. For the field please, you help us, we can buy a place and begin making fields. Because if we make the fields, we will be OK. That’s what I have to say. Please help us like that."
19.(1:16) "Myself I want to speak about the Movement that we want to create. We want this Movement to be spread all over the world, to help people who are suffering from HIV. We want you to help us. Please do not leave us down, we are too much suffering here. I will be very happy if you could even come here, I want you to come here and see how much we are suffering. Mothers are suffering, husbands have died, the country is difficult, we are living in a difficult way. Please come and see how much is true what we are saying. That's why we want to make a group, a Movement so that we could be together, and we want you to help us."
20. (0:16): The packet containing the medical devices is brought to be shown to the 134 people living with HIV.
21. (0:22): Presenting the medical devices to some who are very interested.
22. (3:57): Presenting the devices. Albert is giving an explanation on the devices. Also is arranged the first meeting on Saturday for the devices use.
23. (0:40) and 24. (0:16): The meal is distributed and people are eating.
25. (0:16) and 26. (0:24): Some young people with HIV, behind the gathering place, taking their meal and soft drinks.
27. (1:38) and 28. (1:07): distributing the transport money, with a list. (CRN covered cost of return bus fare to the gathering)
Financing the Emergence of a People’s Movement.
Total Received = US$4,488.40
Food support = US$990.00
Part wages project facilitators = US$600.00
Training participants = US$115.00
Community Fund Assets = US$2,783.40
Total Expenditure = US$4,488.40
Of the US$2,783.40 Community Fund assets, US$2,232.00 was issued as loans to kick-start 5 vege growing points. These vege points are already sufficiently productive that US$1,020.00 has been repaid to the Community Fund. A further US$1,571.40 is being made available as loans to kick-start 5 fresh food selling points.
CRN’s target from its commencement in Nov/06 is to provide in all
US$1,000 in food support (US$10 still to raise)
US$2,760 for part wages to project facilitators (US$2,160 still to raise)
US$9,000 for Community Fund (US$6,216.60 still to raise)
In all that amounts to US$8,386.60 still to raise for this first project. Our target is to raise A$500 = about US$380 each month, and at this rate it will take a further two years to fully fund the project. With just 5 people with HIV established with vege growing jobs, and a further 5 being established with fresh food selling jobs, that leaves a further 40 people with HIV who are mostly homeless and hungry and without means of support. Their situation remains desperate. Once all 50 have income generating activities, the Community Fund will be used to support community welfare projects..
The first need of people with HIV is acute hunger and famine. The number approaching us is so great, but we can only expand our Community Fund base slowly, so to establish a pattern of quality support that hopefully major financiers will then follow. Our goal is to support a second 50 people with HIV by establishing a second Community Fund of US$9,000 and supplying US$2,760 for part wages for this second group of 50 people with HIV. Our target for this second project is to raise A$500 each month.
The people with HIV in Kinshasa have now developed a project to provide free or cheap healing treatment for all with HIV who come. This will involve healing with electrical devices and herbal treatments through voluntary work of many servers. This is such a grand project compared with CRN’s former project of providing free treatment to just three people with HIV! Such is the faith of our friends in Africa in manifesting from God’s abundant supply. Already we have a few in Kinshasa offering their voluntary service, but the work desperately needs premises for a Community Healing Centre. Even a small centre will require US$1,000 initial lease + US$100 rental per month. It will need US$1,000 for equipment, including a power generator to provide continuing treatment during frequent power failures. Overall, this will require A$500 a month.
The NGO group Anamed have established a powerful foundation of education through seminars to establish cultivation of healing herbs and provision of herbal treatments to the community. Their work is now established in 16 African countries. Cooperation with their work is vital to respond to the health needs of people with HIV throughout Africa. Though CRN’s central committee has yet to decide on specific projects to support, opportunities for cooperation are arising in the following areas
Budgets for these potential projects in support of the work of Anamed have yet to be decided, though a modest target overall is to raise A$500 a month.
Overall, therefore, CRN needs to raise about 4 x A$500 = A$2,000 = US$1,600 each month over the coming year. And in the coming years, as the projects expand, this amount will grow. CRN was only partly successful in raising A$500 a month over the past year. And most that was received came from the contributions of just a few.
Compassion Response Network is a very small organisation, with only those funds we are able to attract from public donations. Always, donations received have been only a portion of the amount needed for a comprehensive response, and so we allocate funds in a manner as strengthens the hands of goodwill servers working amidst the most needy and poor communities.
We desperately need sponsorship through regular monthly commitments of money, and we in turn will keep you connected with the group work you are supporting.
The time has come however for us in CRN to now humbly admit that the invoked need is too great for our small group to support in the manner that we have done in the past. Let us therefore ponder the spiritual significance of what is happening.
The Spiritual Significance of Events in Kinshasa
What is happening in Kinshasa is different to that of more conventional charitable support. The recent projects in Kinshasa, are being planned and developed by the people in greatest need themselves. The people living with HIV are openly expressing and communicating the deepest invocations of their hearts, and then they are applying the art of manifestation to actualise their dreams from their own African resources.
Financial support from affluent countries is desperately needed, not in a direct manner, but rather to strengthen the hands of servers for the welfare of the people.
For example the projects to provide income generating activities for people with HIV, comes about through the labour of the African peoples themselves. The role of CRN is simply to provide a Community Fund through which they can take out and repay micro-loans. Without this support, the people would have no means to get started. And once everyone within the community of 50 has a job, the Community Fund will be used to kick-start enterprises that benefit the entire community. And to support the healing initiatives, we are appealing for funding for a Community Healing Centre. It is the African people with HIV who are themselves organising and providing the healing treatment through their goodwill services.
We in CRN started out by providing quality care for three people with HIV in a trial of treatment for HIV. We have asked them to open their hearts, and they now discuss the need to develop a People’s Movement to care for all people with HIV/AIDS. We cannot deny them, but the magnitude of the need simply blows our mind. Our management committee has seven members, all of them poor. And I as secretary am on a disability pension, attending renal dialysis three times a week, and so far I receive very little secretarial support. Yet the revealed need is so very genuine, and we have affirmed our intention to identify with them unconditionally, and to accept the prayers of their heart as our own prayers. And so we petition God, affirming that God will answer our prayers. But how can we in practice support a call so urgent and so vast, when our previous petitions have met with such a limited response?
Our belief in God’s promises is unshakable. We have presented our petition before God to support these courageous and desperately needy people, and so we affirm our faith that these needs will be fully met. But how can this be? What can be the spiritual pattern that is here unfolding in the Mind of God?
What is happening in Kinshasa, is that the energy of goodwill is being released into the hearts of men and women, leading them to establish right relations. This is the supreme goal of the Christ and our spiritual Guides. We do not preach religion to them, we simply discuss practical matters of loving concern for their needs. And yet events in Kinshasa demonstrate that the Christ life or consciousness is beginning to pour out upon the masses and they are responding by praying to establish right relations.
And so we who wish to support them, must pray to understand how Christ would guide our actions. Much of our inspiration comes from the books of Findhorn. In particular from the Findhorn book God Spoke To Me by Eileen Caddy (p70), we read,
"Take heed of those words you have read so many times: "The works that I do shall ye do also and greater works shall ye do." The promise was not that you should do the same, but even greater. You read these words but it takes long for you to realise that they are given to you. You have to accept them as part of your life and do something about them. You have to give them life force. You have to become My hands and feet."
How can we demonstrate the Christ ministry, the Christ consciousness, and so respond adequately to the great need? Under the directorship of the Christ, our spiritual Guides are sending forth a great stream of spiritual, healing energy through those who pray so selflessly and demonstrate a desire to serve all humanity. This stream must flow through to humanity at their deepest point of need. That healing stream may be called the Christ force, or avataric force. Our task is to bear witness to this flow, and to help facilitate this flow, so to demonstrate right relations upon the physical level through direct and compassionate action in response to urgent need.
When we focus primarily on praying for our personal needs, we block the flow of the Christ Force within ourselves. We must burn through these barriers by applying the fire of the will to love, and thus bring about the needed changes within ourselves, thus allowing us to freely distribute the Christ force, the Fire of Love. For if these prayers for humanity are to be manifested upon Earth, it is we who must offer to become the hands and feet of the Christ so that we can bring these things about.
Much of the suffering of the African people is through an economic servitude, that we the affluent nations impose upon them, so that we can ravage their natural resources and lift up our affluent consumer lifestyle. And so many in Africa are homeless, living in famine, and infected with HIV. Over many years we in CRN have shared about the great suffering in Africa, and how a small flow of financial assistance can help transform the lives of so many in Africa. Many have been inspired by the words we share, but only a few respond in a practical way.
Yet if we are to help transform the global situation, we must identify with those in Africa with HIV who suffer as though they are even closer than our own family. For through their selfless sacrifices and service, they are lifting up the work of the Christ. Through them, we witness the demonstration of the era in which the true outer work commences, a process that must, when enough men and women of goodwill join together, transform the world and bring about right relations over our entire planet.
Our prayer then is to participate in the development of a culture, of demonstrating a pattern of following the Christ ministry, of facilitating the flow of the Christ force to areas of humanity’s most urgent need. To these things, though we are few, we commit ourselves unconditionally. We pray that others will join us and identify with the vast need, and thus offer their hands and feet to enable a practical and meaningful response.
Yours in Love and Light,
David Keane,
Secretary, Compassion Response Network