Yesterday I Prayed to God

It was the first time I’ve ever done it.

I was standing inside a woman’s house. She had AIDS, full-blown AIDS, and she was sitting on a chair, with her eyes half-open. Two of her friends were there with her, silent.

“This is Kiselwa”, Natalie, a white Christian South African woman said. “She has been living with AIDS for two years now.”

We'd been spending the day visiting patients of Natalie's Christian NGO, a mess of an organization that sought to fight AIDS "the Christian way," using prayer in lieu of sexual education.

“Please, let us bow our heads and pray for her,” said Natalie

Everyone in the room bowed their heads and I closed my eyes. This is what happened:

“God. Hello. Hi. This feels pretty fucking weird, but yeah…hi. Uhm. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Why the fuck did you command people to stop having sex before marriage? Do you realize your teachings have been used to further the stigma against HIV? Do you realize they’re teaching abstinence because they think this well end the pandemic? Fuck abstinence. Literally. Let’s all gang bang abstinence up the ass because it’s the stupidest idea for an AIDS program I’ve ever fucking heard."

"Guess what, Christians? The bible doesn’t know shit about AIDS. It doesn’t. AIDS developed thousands of years after the bible. It’s the deadliest pandemic we’ve seen in recent memory, and it’s made all the more deadly because it’s associated with sex, the most fucking taboo thing ever. And you know this! And you know condoms work, and condoms are the most important part of an AIDS prevention campaign, and yet you still teach abstinence. You devote your money to buying mini-bibles filled with fun facts, and hip language and you spend your outreach budget on faith-based initiatives. But you can’t pray the AIDS away. You have to treat it. And you’re not.”

Amen.

The other woman was toothless. We visited her too, and let me tell you she was one of the happiest mother fuckers I’ve ever seen. Happy with all these sores running up and down her arms, as she grabbed us for a hug. Such warmth! Such confidence! Where’d she find it from? Jesus of course. Jesus, INC. He’ll chase your blues away, provided you stop having sex with a condom and being gay. Let’s all sit down and pray the AIDS away. Really. Let’s do it. Let’s all hold hands and talk about Jesus and then maybe we’ll all stop dying.

And the dumbstruck Christian NGO directors, when I asked them a question about condoms, were so fucking dumbstruck I could have dropped an apple down their gaping mouths.

“What would you do if someone, a Christian, told you they didn’t want to stop having sex, because it felt good? What if they told you they wanted to use a condom?”

They wanted to laugh, but I was dead serious.

“Well, we’d tell them to go into the Church and pray about it. Ask God what to do..”

“Okay, and then what?” I wanted to ask, but it was time to go.

Why weren’t we working to create a secular condom-based society? A condomed society covered in latex where nothing can seep through and everything is bottled up where it’s supposed to be. Where no skin touches, no blood drips, no juices spill.

Most tourists don’t know how bad it is, how they’re dying like flies, even when they’re staying in resorts right next to all the death. They’re dying from diarrhea less than a mile away from a posh five star South African game reserve and hotel.

South African tourism will never incorporate an AIDS hospice tour, unless that is you ask for the special Oprah package. And maybe that’s what we should create- an Oprah package for all you thick-skinned, strong-gutted foreigners. You think you can see the real world? Think you can stomach it? Here. Hold my baby. Feel my warts. Smell my garbage.

But then again, you couldn’t see the village we saw, even if you wanted to. Heaps of newspapers, rotten apples, used latex gloves, and burned tires mark the entrance. You have to drive down a tiny dirt road. It’s hidden, and I guess poverty doesn’t really go well with the whole safari theme.