Social Justice, Spirituality, & the Subversive…from Sonya

History says, Don’t Hope

On this side of the grave,

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up

And hope ad history rhyme.

~Seamus Heaney  

      On this momentous day, June 16, 2010, Operation Bobbi Bear revealed to me that efforts focusing on HIV/AIDS, child protection, and global health in general are just as spiritual as they are scientific, and that meaning over measurement must be the way, that it is the only sustainable way. As we entered the Durban town of Amanzimtoti, meaning “sweet waters,” I kept thinking to myself, how does a non-profit institution unbreak a child’s spirit that is stripped of dignity and self-worth? How can a community reteach victimized children the concept of innocence, a prized childhood jewel that is no longer natural or familiar to its deserving owners? How can trust in the goodness in the world and in others be revealed to a child, possibly for the first time since they left their mother’s womb? These questions of mine soon transformed from seemingly insolvable philosophical puzzles to real answers that were deeply rooted in and practiced by the Toti community. This day was focused on visiting and honoring Operation Bobbi Bear, a child rights-centered non-profit organization that rescues, rehabilitates, and empowers youth who have been sexually abused or sodomized by the individuals whom they have trusted the most: fathers, uncles, neighbors, school teachers, and pastors. The organization was founded in 1992 by the divine Jackie Branfield, and its mission has been sustained by the tireless commitment of dozens of staff members, who call themselves “child rights and HIV warriors.” The designation “warrior” is an understatement; Jackie and her team members have sacrificed their own lives for their cause, regardless of threats of imprisonment and physical harm by the local government, police unit, and perpetrators. Operation Bobbi Bear follows the child rape victim from the beginning of despair to the end of retribution, from the very moment a child is sexually assaulted in their homes to the medical evaluation process in the local hospital to the collaboration with the criminal justice system in seeking justice for the shattering of these children’s bodies and souls. However, the most salient goal is mobilizing and organizing the Toti community, once voiceless and disempowered, to hold local government and courts accountable for their apathy. Volunteers from the community are trained to serve as child advocates and demand that law enforcement upholds the child protection statutes listed in the South African Charter of the Constitution. The organization emphasizes that HIV/AIDS and child abuse work is not an act of charity, but a call for social justice, because these societal diseases are a result of structural violence: government inaction and police corruption that have perpetuated rather than ceased child depravity in Durban and the rest of South Africa.

      Today, we walked up to a multigenerational sea of women, men, and children singing in resilient, joyous Zulu harmonies, despite inhabiting a town drenched in the hardships of HIV/AIDS and child exploitation. Never had I witnessed a space that had embraced the African spiritual concept of ubuntu, or shared humanity, as deeply as this community of women as its unwavering leaders and children as its keepers of justice. Never had I tangibly felt the inextricable link between between health and human rights as profoundly as today, symbolized  by the community’s main source of emotional and spiritual refuge, their ethereal tree. Nelson Henderson once said, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” Although Operation Bobbi Bear planted the tree into the community’s hearts, it was Keep A Child Alive’s volunteers and funders who sat in its shade, while child victims and community members planted the seeds of empowerment and led the day’s celebrations in honoring Bobbi Bear’s heroic work. We were immediately embraced by the community, confirming for us that there was no distinction between us and them, as they clothed us, danced with us, blessed us, and prayed with us. Bobbi Bear volunteers dressed us into gorgeous patterned fabrics, traditional Zulu jewelry, and colorful head wraps, and taught us a Zulu dance that we performed in front of a crowd filled with both laughter and cheers, alongside ancestral drumbeats and children chanting. Then, the naming ritual began. There are moments in the world when humanity’s beauty and purity are revealed to you, where you realize heaven is nowhere but here on earth. Sometimes you meet people in life that affect you so viscerally that you are forever changed, even unto your name. This was the moment and here was this individual. One of the town’s most respected spiritual women placed her hand on each of our hearts, surveyed our souls, and spoke to higher spirits with her eyes tightly closed, in order to gift us with a Zulu name that summarized what we meant to humanity. Our names ranged from “builder of the nation” to “endless,” and the woman broke down in tears as she understood the powerful spirit-to-spirit connection she felt amongst strangers who came from around the world to love her people and to be equally loved in return.

       We then sat in a circle, children amongst KCA volunteers amongst Bobbi Bear staff amongst community members. We asked Jackie and her staff about the challenges they faced, the triumphs, the fears, and the stories that both haunted and inspired them. They told us about the sometimes self-defeating nature of child protection, since many of the children they rescue have no families to return to and are taken in by staff members themselves. They told us about Angel, an infant who was sexually abused at eight months, whose eyes revealed no desire to live and passed away in a staff member’s arms shortly thereafter. They reminded us how we, the global health community, who possess the resources and voice to enact change, are responsible for some of the worst moral failings that occur in HIV/AIDS and child health efforts. For example, Jackie described to us how only a few years ago, post-exposure prophylaxis, a high dosage of antiretroviral drugs administered within 72 hours of exposure to the HIV virus in order to significantly reduce the risk of contracting the disease, was accessible to doctors and nurses in South Africa, but not child rape victims. This both angered and confused me to my core: how can my own medical community, a community I was once proud to be a member of, readily take a pill that was unavailable to those who needed it the most? We were then taken to Operation Bobbi Bear’s rescue center, where we were shown the rape bag that staff members prepared, which provided resources such as sanitary napkins and tissues for each victim. Next, we held a purple teddy bear in both disgust and despair, the stuffed animal that became these children’s saving grace. Before Operation Bobbi Bear was founded, many child rape victims were too traumatized to recollect the exact details of their assault in court, and their stories were constantly retranslated by authorities to the point that they were stripped of their essential truth. As a result, the teddy bear was implemented as a tool that served both as standard forensic evidence in South Africa’s courts, as well as transcended sociocultural taboos in talking about one’s own body. The teddy bear visually represents exactly where one was violated, physically and emotionally. The children communicate their experiences and emotions with plaster where they are physically penetrated; elastic bands to show where they were tied; and permanent markers to draw tears, wounds, and words, such as “put skin in bottle.”

      Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore once stated, “Children are living proof that God has not given up on the world.” Then why have we as an international community given up on the orphaned and abused children of South Africa? Imagine if we saw God in each child as a solution to abuse and HIV/AIDS transmission, because then, who would want to harm God?

I cannot even fathom the countless number of sexually victimized children that go unreported; the overwhelming number of children that Operation Bobbi Bear has discovered are only the lucky ones, the cream of the crop. We must change our myopic viewpoint of the devastating situation: these abused children are not products of their environment, but products of the expectations Jackie and the rest of the world set for them. We must set the seemingly most wildly impossible expectations for their lives at the same level as children in affluent countries, so that we can shift our focus from these children merely surviving to thriving. We must not settle for Operation Bobbi as a best practices model, but as a standard model that should be institutionalized all over the world. We must not be paralyzed by fear in failing to achieve the most idealistic dreams we set for vulnerable communities, because the lower we fall, the higher we will want to soar, and that at the end of the day, we are just imperfect beings called to a perfect mission. When we first came to Johannesburg, we visited Soweto’s apartheid museum; one day, it is my dream that we will return to visit child abuse and HIV/AIDS museums, and equally wonder how these societal ills actually once existed and infiltrated real lives. After surrounding myself among moral giants all week long, from Mum Carol to Jackie to Alicia and Leigh, I learned that our generation can no longer rest safely on the shoulders of today’s heroes because there is simply too much work to be done. Let us celebrate the community health worker who is faceless to the rest of the world but a savior to her patients; let us remember the child rape victim who does not even have a birth certificate unto to her name but dreams that one day she will be remembered by her community for the beauty she represented; let us celebrate our generation which possesses the means to transform power, prestige, and self-indulgence into collective hope, divine love, and sustained peace.  

Love, peace, & blessings,

Sonya