Abataka: "When I stood
on the plains of Africa and saw, for the first time, acres of orphans, I could
not breathe. My tongue could not form words. I held my sons' hands while
looking at other children reaching for hands that were not there. I knew the
numbers: already ten million orphans, thousands more by the day. Suddenly one
statistic was no longer one story. It was a story being told one dying child
at a time.
In America, the hope for AIDS is science. But when I
asked in Africa where one finds hope, I was never pointed to a laboratory; the
answer was never "science." it was always the hope of ABATAKA. It's nurture
and care, the security of knowing that others will protect us, the certainty
that we belong. It is unity, oneness, wholeness. It is our self-definition
from nursery to grave. We are, in ABATAKA, never alone. Whether we live or
whether we die, in ABATAKA we are loved and remembered and valued.
What divides America from Africa is the same thing that divides most Americans
from AIDS: It is not ours and it is not us. this view is more dangerous than
terrorism itself, because it takes from us what makes us human. We cannot say
both that we are human and that this suffering is not ours. If we are human,
this is ours. It is what C.S. Lewis calls ' a severe mercy,' the lesson taught
by AIDS that could never be learned from terrorism. The power of terrorism is
hatred; it teaches only fear. But the power of ABATAKA is love; it comes with
comfort and compassion, giving hope even where there is no healing."
Mary Fisher
World AIDS Day 2002
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Washington DC
from the book: Abataka
Mary Fisher's AIDS campaign has taken her around the
globe. But it was Africa that "changed her," she said after visiting as part
of an official delegation and then returning with her two, teenaged sons.
from acres of orphans to mourning villages, Fisher breathed in the
experience of AIDS in Africa - including learning the power of ABATAKA, a
pan-African term meaning family, tribe, community, home, belonging.
Africa left Fisher inspired and impatient. Between
her visits she delivered bold testimony to the U.S. House of
Representatives.
"I have seen AIDS - I've seen it in Africa, in
America, and in the mirror. I have looked into the eyes of a thousand
orphans. I've held other mothers who want, like me, not to leave their
children. I have smelled the smell of dying. And I have tasted the absolute
despair of those who are defined, as I am defined, by the virus. Therefore,
I have come to Washington today to ask those of you with power to make a
difference.... " (April 5, 2000)
The agony of AIDS is the backdrop for Fisher's recent
work, some of it chronicled here. But above the grim images of wasting and
death hangs the miracle of ABATAKA. Fisher's Africa-inspired quilts,
sculptures and textiles give her soul a place to speak of courage, passion,
integrity, hope and humor.
In in end, what we take from Fisher's art is a compelling
argument that, if we are willing, we can make a difference.
