Studying the global 
AIDS crisis
Before departing for the “Tanzania and the Global AIDS Crisis” course, Wartburg College students must complete a half-credit course. In addition to studying materials from Web sites and watching the Oscar-
winning film Yesterday, students have a reading list that includes:
• Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis by Donald E. Messer (Fortress, 2004).
• Black Death: AIDS in Africa by Susan S. Hunter (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
• Children of AIDS: Africa’s Orphan Crisis by Emma Guest (Pluto Press, 2003).
• The Worlds of a Maasai Warrior by Tepilit Ole Saitoti (University of California Press, 1988).
During a monthlong course in Tanzania, students at Wartburg College, an ELCA school in Waverly, Iowa, realized the full impact of the adage “It takes a village to raise a child.”
At
their first Sunday worship in that African country, students in the
“Tanzania and the Global AIDS Crisis” class watched a woman bring her
niece forward for baptism. The 1-year-old’s parents died of AIDS, so
her aunt is raising her.
After worship an “elder took the
child from her aunt and walked around the circle of congregational
members, who stuffed Tanzanian shilling notes into the child’s pockets
to help pay the expenses” for her upbringing, said Fred Strickert, a
professor of religion at Wartburg.
 |
| Jess
Wilke, a 2006 graduate of Wartburg College, Waverly, Iowa, shows a
digital photo to children in Lubusazi, a village south of Morogoro,
Tanzania. |
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
