"And what does the Lord require of you?" asks the Old Testament prophet Micah. "To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God," comes the reply in Micah 6.8.
It was with this in mind that Micah Challenge UK's new Executive Director Andy Clasper headed out to Zambia for the first time in August. There, Christians are living out this biblical mandate through their work to halt the spread of HIV and AIDS and care for the infected and affected alike.In a country as stunningly beautiful as Zambia, resplendent landscapes and scenes of wildlife undoubtedly make for easier viewing than the jarring reality of poverty. The view of a large gleaming lake from the lodgings at Sinazongwe, on the shores of Lake Kariba, was initially "thrilling".
The thrill soon wore off, however, when Andy discovered that tens of thousands of local Tonga people had been displaced to create the lake in the late 1950s as part of a hydroelectric energy-creation plan. Micah Challenge partner World Vision is still in the region today, trying to remedy the damage to the wellbeing of these people and their descendants that the relocation caused.
Any lingering notions of an earthly paradise were soon dispelled after a meeting with Sinazongwe's Director of Health. While tourists regularly enjoy luxury safaris and fishing tours on the flourishing Lake Kariba and nearby Zambezi River, he would be happy if the government could satisfy his very modest wish for six trucks.
As it is, there is only one truck to cover the entire area, home to around 110,000 people. This inevitably means that the truck's use changes according to the need of the moment. At times, it is an ambulance; on other occasions, it is a vehicle for transporting doctors and health supplies.
The meeting was a reality check for Andy, who left his job at the Mayor of London's office earlier in June to join Micah Challenge - a global movement of thousands of Christians. Those Christians are all lobbying their governments to ensure that extreme global poverty really is halved by 2015 - the target date of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are a set of eight promises made by world leaders which include halving the number of people who live on less than a dollar a day and halting the spread of HIV and AIDS.
Andy says: "Even in that first meeting I started to be struck by the reality of poverty. I asked the health director what he would wish for if he could ask the president for anything. His reply was six trucks. For the want of six trucks there are people in this part of Zambia who have never had medical care, they can't be reached."
Grassroots organisations are doing their best to make up for the shortfall in medical facilities. Under the World Vision-facilitated Community Care Coalition (CCC), volunteers are going directly to people infected with HIV and AIDS to care for them in their own homes, often bringing additional food and clothing.
Tragically, a large extent of the CCC's work goes into caring for some of the 710,000 children in Zambia who have been orphaned as a result of AIDS.
"It felt strange that so much of their work was focused on orphans, because we don't have a problem with orphans in the UK," says Andy after a meeting with 24 CCC volunteers. "Then a statistic I'd read earlier really came alive for me: average life expectancy in Zambia is 37. Some people will live longer, but some will die even younger. That's going to leave vulnerable children - a lot of them."
