The Reality of Human Disgust and the Dignity of Human Touch
The rancid odor of an barely existing, hardly breathing, rotting and dying human being, wallowing away in human urine, fecal matter and neglect, is something that I never thought would experience became a hard and fast reality in my life with the image, odor, and memory that has been branded in my mind and heart for the rest of my life. It was the day that I met Philemon, a man that was younger than me, that had been afflicted with the deadly disease of HIV AIDS which lead to him contracting tuberculosis, withering away and lying a cold hard concrete floor, shivering feverishly and finding it quite difficult to even feign a smile to welcome my teammates and myself into the what could be barely construed as a room that he lived in. With there being tens of thousands afflicted with this murderous disease, on this day the good Lord saw it fit to bring this particular man into our lives and us into his
Although there are no words in any language that can even come close to describing this experience, the only word that comes to mind is “DISGUST. You may think that I was disgusted by this man, and mind you, I was. However it was not the sight, smell, or fell of him that disgusted me. It was the fact that in this world, where 5% of the world controls 95% of the world’s wealth, a world where it is possible to eradicate this kind of disease and poverty, I was disgusted by the fact and state that this is the reality of an actual human condition. I was utterly and uncontrollably distraught at the fact that this is a reality that the so many in our world are oblivious to. I was disgusted by the injustice that this actually goes on and that Philemon, is just one example of so many that live and die like this day after day.
Our job that day was to cook for him, to bathe him, to do his laundry and commune with this man in the midst of this very easily contractible disease, but the reality is that we were there for way more than that. We were there to be a conduit of touch, a vehicle of, and to get a whiff of what the real meaning behind the purpose of life is all about – people such as these.
I could describe to you all of the details of how he looked; how his body was as hard as petrified tree with puss excreting lesions all over his lower body. How his feet were so swollen and rotting that there were no shoes that could fit his feet. I could describe how emaciated he was to the point where his ribs were like daggers trying to freed from his frail flesh. I could describe to you how we bathed him on that cold floor, how we scrubbed the crevices of his groin area, his rectum, and other “pits” on his body. I could describe all of this and much more in graphic and sickening details but that would not be as important or as relevant as the real story of the “why” of and behind that day – Neglect and Dignity.
This man had been stripped of all his dignity, pride and any semblance of a life and we had the audacity to walk in to be of service to him donned in surgical masks and latex gloves in fear of contraction and our own lives more than resuscitating the pride in this man. I know that how we were not wrong per say, but it still angered me. How did Philemon feel that we had to come in that way? How must he have felt that he had come to such a lowly state that he could not even bathe or feed himself? Could Philemon even feel like a man?
What we did do that day was give him the “touch” that he had so desired but had been refused for so long. As we did our duties we could tell, even though he could not express it, that he was so very grateful, so appreciative of the fact that even in the midst of our fear, we reached out and touched him and loved on him. Did we restore his dignity? I don’t know. What I do know is that whatever it was that we “did” I felt like it was so very insufficient compared to what he so rightly deserved. As we left, he gave us a wave and a crooked semblance of a smile and that meant more than the world to us. Even now the thought of him still brings rivers of tears to my eyes and a deep rooted anger to my heart that this kind of injustice continues to go on and mostly ignored.
The day after our team returned from South Africa, we received an email from the director of Zimele, saying that Philemon had died. I was an absolute mess that entire day. I still think of Philemon often. I often wonder what was going through his mind that day as we were there with him. I wonder even if we really had an impact on his life. What I do know that lives such as Philemon is the epitome of what is that we need to live our lives for and be a channel of love for.
