I Want to Tell You a Story-Tommy's Story

Tommy was a Liberian refugee who had come to Abidjan 20 or more years before. Tommy was a Christian and had been trained as a plumber. He spent most of his time working for the Baptist Mission or in our Baptist churches. He had many friends among Ivoirians, Liberians, and Americans. One day Tommy came to one of our offices looking for help. He had been sick for a long time and had been to the doctor over and over and given all kinds of medicines. But he wasn?t getting better and could no longer work. He needed money for more prescriptions. The people in our office told him they would not help him until he got and HIV test to find out what was really wrong. But when the results came back positive, they didn?t know how to help him. So they called me.At that time, I was working in an AIDS counseling clinic so I thought that would at least be a good place to start since they have a doctor and a pharmacy there. Tommy agreed to meet me, so I took him, the girl who was caring for him full time, and another missionary. That day when I met Tommy he was so frail I thought he would break, he had terrible hiccups, and sores on his skin. At the clinic they asked a lot of questions and talked with him about his faith. He was able to see a doctor and get some medicine to stop the hiccups and itching. But he wasn?t sleeping at night and his stomach was running. After a couple of weeks of continuing to get worse, we decided it would be best to put him in an AIDS hospital. At first they had no beds, which basically meant we had to wait for someone else to die.While at the hospital they continually gave him blood transfusions to help him keep his strength. I was able to visit him only one time. It was a very clean room, not at all what I had expected, but had 8 or 10 beds that were filled with men who were dying of AIDS. The man next to him was apparently always doing things that made Tommy laugh (his mind was already gone) like crawling into other people?s beds and taking Tommy?s shoes. The night before, he had taken Tommy?s shoes, so Tommy borrowed someone else?s when he got up to use the bathroom and had slipped and fallen.One of Tommy?s friends, who visited him often, told use there was good news. Tommy was only in the first stages of AIDS. But when the other missionary talked to the Director of the clinic she said that she had never said that and that Tommy was actually in the last stages of AIDS. (Unfortunately it is cultural to lie about difficult things.) Tommy died a few weeks later and was never even given a proper funeral.I had an opportunity to talk with him before he moved to the hospital. He told me that he was laying awake at night trying to figure out how he had contracted HIV. Unfortunately there is no way we could ever know. But Tommy died at peace with his faith in Christ.Sadly, Tommy?s story is the story of over 30 million people in Africa alone. Many are put in clinics or hospitals and left there to die with no visitors and no hope.I am blessed to have known Tommy, even for a short time and to have his story become part of mine.