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Doing God's Work in Zambia
The bishop of Mongu refuses to lose faith in the uphill battle against AIDS. He's still saving lives, and souls, one at a time.
By John Donnelly, Globe Staff, 6/8/2003
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is home is a place called Mongu, and it is as exotic as it sounds. Spitting cobras slip into bedroom corners. Bandits dressed only in their underwear step out of bushes to rob holy men. In remote villages, a man is considered rich if he owns an ox. Western Zambia, beautiful and remote along the Angolan border, is one of the most desperately poor corners of the world. Some foreigners call it Dodge.
Paul Francis Duffy, now in his 20th year in western Zambia, has no intentions of getting out, even if this is about as far as he could be from his birthplace of Norwood, Massachusetts -- geographically, culturally, perhaps spiritually, too. Duffy, 70, is the unlikely bishop of Mongu. His skin is pale despite the warm sun, his close-cropped hair is whiter than his skin, and his accent is so distinct that if you close your eyes while he speaks, you are transported to Greater Boston.
At a motel restaurant on the edge of town, Duffy is eating a plate of grilled fish, taking small bites. It is a rare treat for a man who eats meat or fish only about once a month. He takes his vow of poverty with devout seriousness. Extras are for others. "This is where I belong," he says toward the end of the meal. "I just feel it is my duty to serve, that's all."
A nun describes him as "a simple man who lives simply and eats simply." But serving here, at this time in history, is far from simple. No longer is a missionary's work in the southern cone of Africa measured by the number of voices saying their amens on Sundays. It is about saving lives. Saving souls is gravy.
The work now revolves around battling the deadly ways of a virus, the virus that causes AIDS. Here, as elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, the fight is a lonely one, the losses are great, and the Roman Catholic Church in Mongu finds itself a trailblazer looking for partners.
Nearly a decade ago, Duffy says over dinner, he recognized that he had to learn as much as he could about acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It had begun to kill some of his parishioners in their 20s and 30s. He studied in Zambia to be an AIDS counselor, and he encouraged those in his diocese to do what they could to help.
Over the years, his nuns and priests responded in various ways. They visited homes of the ill to check up on them and bring food. They counseled them. They started a support group for grandparents whose houses were flooded with orphans -- their own grandchildren. And one nun opened an orphanage after three babies were dropped off on her doorstep over the course of a week. That was three years ago. Now she cares for 77 children. Duffy has become the overseer of all these projects, and his role includes hunting for funds to keep them running.
When he first visited the orphanage, "a guy came to the door and said, `Bishop, I wonder if you could get my baby into the orphanage, too.' Later on, they named that baby Paul," Duffy remembers. "A year later, the man brought a second baby. They named that baby Duffy. The man said his wife had just died, and they needed help.
"Well, Paul died soon after his brother arrived," the bishop says softly. "I went to check on Duffy a month after that, and he was doing fine. But then I heard six months later that Duffy died, too."
The bishop looks at his food. "That's just the way things are here," he says, matter-of-factly, finishing his fish.
hroughout sub-Saharan Africa, the battle to fight AIDS and a host of other deadly infectious diseases has been too weak and too late for millions. With only a few exceptions, governments have failed to muster enough funds, expertise, or political will. The world's richest countries have only begun to acknowledge the vastness of the problem. It has resulted in an enormous gap between the aid and the need.
Charities have stepped into the vacuum, and often, faith-based groups are in the lead. In Mongu, a province of 620,000 people that is the size of New York State, Duffy's diocese has knit together a tiny safety net for those who are destitute, ill, or both.
His web of priests, brothers, nuns, and novices -- 88 in all -- runs a district-wide nutrition program; directs a home-based care effort that tended to 1,332 people last year (281 of them died, all but seven from AIDS or tuberculosis); supports school programs for more than 3,000 orphans; leads support groups for elderly people who are taking care of scores of grandchildren; and even, under the tutelage of a 70-something nun from Ireland, has established a primitive infirmary for prisoners at the Mongu jail.
While impressive, it falls far short of the need. More than 80 percent of the people in the province live on less than $1 a day, and roughly 20 percent of the people in Zambia aged 15 to 49 are infected with HIV or AIDS.
Travis Hooks arrived in Mongu late last year. He is 32 and a devout Catholic from Bettendorf, Iowa, who says his gift from God is an ability to make money. But his career as a stockbroker wasn't fulfilling, and he went searching for a way to help people directly. After hearing about the Mongu program, he flew to Zambia. Two months after arriving in Mongu, he was full of doubt.
Duffy asks Hooks to give a visitor a tour of the diocese's nutrition center. But after the bishop leaves, Hooks realizes he has the wrong set of keys. Outside the locked doors, he talks about the challenges here.
"A lot of this is depressing," he says. "You can't really do anything about the poverty, you got no resources, and you begin thinking, `Why am I even here?' I guess we do what we can. It's like the story of the guy who is walking along the edge of the ocean. Thousands of jellyfish are on the shore. He picks one up and throws it back into the water. Another guy asks him, `What are you doing? Throwing them back in is hopeless.' The first guy says, `Yeah, but it's not hopeless for that jellyfish.' "
Hooks laughs, then turns serious. "If you save one life, isn't it worth it?" he says. "I guess you do the little bit you can. God doesn't expect us to do everything. You help a few people, and a few people are better off if you have been there."
He doesn't sound convinced. He reaches for humor again. "How can God not give you brownie points for doing something like this?" he says. "I mean, take someone like Bishop Duffy, for instance. When he's on his deathbed, he's going to look back on his life and be a lot more confident than I'm going to be when I meet the Guy. If Jesus were alive today, I have no doubt that he would hop in a Land Cruiser and come down here. I mean, really, where else?"
Hooks slumps against a wall. "I wonder what would happen if we just left," he says. "Would anybody notice? Would it really change anything?"
uffy was born in the midst of the Great Depression, the third and last son of working-class parents in Norwood. The boys' upbringing was traditional. "Our lives were built around the church," he says.
He attended Cathedral High School in the South End of Boston, and in his senior year, a local priest asked him if he wanted to join the priesthood. Duffy wasn't sure. The priest introduced him to a range of options, from a parish priest to the Oblates, an order that responded to "the most difficult missions."
He wasn't impressed with the parish priest that he visited. "He was on call for one day a week," Duffy says. "If I was going to do this, I wanted to work all the time. The Oblates seemed to be the real missionaries."
Duffy joined them, hoping for a challenging overseas assignment. For years, it never materialized. He worked for two years in Nova Scotia but spent the bulk of his time in parishes in Texas. Then, in 1983, the Oblates agreed to take over a mission in Zambia. At age 51, Duffy moved into the wild.
"It was exhilarating," he says. "People's desire to hear the word of God and respond to the teaching was amazing. You would feel like you were making some headway."
Not everyone shared his enthusiasm. One of his colleagues left. Another, the Rev. Pat Gitzen, who still works with Duffy in the Mongu province, says that then, like now, "you would think you were living 200 years ago. You have a couple of oxen, if you're lucky. You have drought and floods all in the same area, so you either grow crops somehow, harvest it, or you die out there.
"This place," Gitzen continues, sitting in his living room with Duffy, "is paranormal sometimes. You don't know what planet these guys are from. We just had these three robbers, wearing just their underwear, hold up one of our cars. Because of the long war in Angola, you can buy AK-47s today for a bag of mealy-meal. This is like the Wild West in the US. You think you were in a Louis L'Amour novel. I used to be afraid of the snakes, but it's more the burglars with the AK-47s now."
Duffy perks up, and the two men begin talking about their experiences with the spitting cobras, black mambas, and puff adders. "One time," says Duffy, "during Mass, a snake was sliding on a beam behind the priest's head. People were pointing at it and leaving the church, and he kept on talking."
Snakes aren't the only danger. Twice, Duffy almost died from sudden illnesses. In 1987, he collapsed with a high fever. He was airlifted to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and then to South Africa, losing consciousness on the way. He was diagnosed with tubercular pneumonia. In 2000, he collapsed again and was flown to South Africa a second time. After the first emergency, when Duffy awoke, a doctor told him he had good news. "He said I didn't have HIV," Duffy says, laughing. "I said, 'What makes you think that?' He said, `You're from Zambia, you have tubercular pneumonia, and 95 percent of the time that means HIV.' They tested my blood while I was unconscious."
The hour is getting late. By 8:30 p.m., Duffy is back in his unadorned four-room house. One room serves as his oratory. Another room has a television, purchased by parents of one of the nuns. He turns it on only for the news at night.
In this sense, life is pruned to essentials. "The only two things that I buy are bread and washing powder," he says. "The rest I live off what people give me. I don't need anything else."
n order to effectively fight AIDS in Africa, all kinds of efforts and people will be needed. Duffy contributes behind the scenes, coordinating activities and trying to raise money. He remains detached from hands-on work, perhaps as a coping mechanism, perhaps due to time constraints, but perhaps also as a reflection of who he is. All around him, though, are nuns and a few priests who are his opposite. They embrace the emotional and physical work.
One is Sister Bertha Flores, a psychologist from Mexico. She is sitting among a group of orphans, helping put together rations that include biscuits, flour, and soap. She says she is in awe of the people she serves.
"People come in with a kind of cancer on the skin, or cancerous growth in the throat, or with an opportunistic infection from AIDS, and the only painkiller we have is aspirin," she says. "It's amazing. These are people who can teach us a lot, because they live in pain, and they have accepted it. They have the inner strength to cope with the most difficult situations in life."
At her side is living proof. Ivy Muyembe, 16, condenses her life story to a spare paragraph.
"Daddy died in an accident in 1995," she says. "Mommy died from an illness -- they say it was AIDS -- in June 1999. We went to live with my auntie, and she also passed away, in 2001, also from AIDS. Then we went to live with Grandma. She decided to die [last] June."
That makes her a quadruple orphan. She raises her 8-year-old brother, Brian, alone in their grandmother's house. She now worries of losing that house. She says that local authorities have told her that if she doesn't upgrade the facility by next month, they will take it from her. She doesn't know where she'll get the money to do it.
"I am now responsible for everything. It's very difficult to handle, but I have to do it," she says. "I put everything in God's hands. My brother asks about Grandma, about Mom, about Auntie. I just ignore him. He keeps it up, and I just say they have gone somewhere. If he knows, I think he will be disturbed."
Still, she says she feels fortunate for the church's help, which includes food, an education, and emotional support. It is a story that is familiar at the church's sites, including a gathering of old men and women in Limulonga. Sitting on benches underneath an open-air hut with a woven roof, 21 elderly people dance, sing, and tell stories during one of their frequent get-togethers, organized by Sister Rose McHugh, a native of Ireland.
"I come here because it helps my mind," says Namakundu Kashala, who is in her 70s and takes care of five orphaned grandchildren. "I have so much sadness, but by now, because of this, I am getting used to it."
Kashala begins weeping. A group of women start clapping and singing, lifting her off the bench. She dances before them on the dirt floor, and the tears fly off her cheeks.
ravis Hooks has left Mongu. He moved recently to Denver, where he is selling stocks. "At the end of the day, it just didn't feel right," he says. "Did I want to be essentially a supply officer in Mongu for three years, or did I want to make money in the stock market and donate the money to the church? It was a question of being an arms dealer or a soldier."
Denver's district attorney, Bill Ritter Jr., also watches Mongu with keen interest. He was there from 1987 to 1990 for the Oblates, helping fishermen set up businesses. He, too, is concerned about whether the church, almost by itself, can make a big difference -- especially with AIDS. "The question there also should be whether we have some vision of the operation being run fully by Zambians," he says. "But an issue like AIDS can take that vision and add 50 years to it."
For those who look around them in Mongu, that is the large frightening question. What will Mongu, or Zambia, or sub-Saharan Africa look like in 50 years? Will population levels be halved? Will the work of the few now multiply in the next few years and stave off such mass death?
Here, for now, the eyes of the church are on the ground, focusing on saving one life at a time. In terms of numbers, they will lose more than they will save. But whether their work inspires Zambians and outsiders to help, no one knows.
On a recent morning, Duffy drives his Toyota pickup truck to one of his favorite places, the orphanage in Kaoma, about 120 miles east of Mongu.
As he gets out of the vehicle and stretches his long legs, children no higher than his knees cluster around him. They wordlessly tug at his black pants. They smile. Duffy keeps walking, patting heads gently. His small gesture isn't enough, not for a 2 1/2-year-old girl. She runs after him and tugs his pants again, harder this time.
The bishop crouches next to her. She sees her opening. Her arms reach up, and all of a sudden she is in his arms. "These kids are something, aren't they?" Duffy says. The girl puts her hand on his face.
Rita Tumbila, the orphanage's school principal, walks alongside him, saying the orphanage had 84 children a few weeks ago. Six died recently, and another was placed in a home. "You know," she says, "what they need the most is a lot of love."
"We do what we can, don't we Rita?" Duffy says. "We can't do everything, but we do what we can."
John Donnelly covers foreign affairs for the Globe. He can be reached at [email protected]. Dominic Chavez is a Globe staff photographer.
This story ran in the Boston Globe Magazine on 6/8/2003.
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