20th August, 2004

DAVID ADAMS

There’s a noticeboard out the back of Agape Home, an orphanage based in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, that cares for children who either have AIDS or have lost parents to the disease.

On it are pinned photos showing the smiling faces of those children that have been adopted by people living in western countries like Canada, Germany, Switzerland and, to a lesser degree, Australia.

Above those are another set of photos. The smiling faces of the children, some no more than babies, shown on this board are no different from those next to them. But these children haven’t been adopted. Their tiny lives came to end when the AIDS virus claimed them instead.

The sound of those children still living at the orphanage playing in the background, Julie Bruce, 45, an Australian Red Cross worker from Sydney, stands in front of the board and relates how she held one of the babies in her arms as she died.

“This time around we’ve had a couple of babies who have died,” she notes. “The time before, I didn’t think I’d get through it - we had probably about 10 babies die in six months so it was really hard.”

The Agape Home (‘agape’ being Greek for unconditional, selfless love) was established by Canadian Christian missionaries Avis Rideout and her husband Roy in 1996.

Its origins can be traced back a few years earlier when Avis, volunteering at a government orphanage, found a two-year-old girl called Nikki who was suffering from AIDS and living in a Government orphanage in Bangkok. Doctors had suggested she be ‘left to die’ but Avis, determined to save Nikki, was eventually able to persuade the reluctant authorities to let her adopt her.

“Pretty much in a nutshell she made a promise to God that if He spared Nikki’s life, she would dedicate the rest of her life to orphans,” explains Bruce. “That’s pretty much how it happened.”

Nikki, whose name is recorded in a sign at the home entrance “Nikki’s Place”, is now 11 and still carries the HIV virus but is otherwise healthy.

Around 165 children have been cared for by the home since it was founded. There are currently around 35 kids at the site, ranging from newborns to the age 12, who are cared for by five permanent administration staff, three long-term supervisors - two of whom are Australian - and around 12 volunteer “nannies”, some of whom are locals and some of whom come from Western countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States, Denmark and other European countries.

It’s Bruce’s third time volunteering at the Agape home. She first visited the home back in 1997 when studying Thai at Chiang Mai University as part of a team from Australian Volunteers International. But it wasn’t until she visited a Government orphanage in the country’s north east that she realised how special Agape was.

“I was just horrified at the treatment of the children and I just kept thinking about Agape and what I had seen there, wondering why can’t it be like that?” she recalls.

“So then I came back for a visit in 1999 and from that visit then I went back and set up the Sydney fundraising committee to raise money (for the project).”

Bruce, who attends Maroubra Baptist Church in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, returned with her son, Ben, for a six month stint in 2000-2001 - during which she became a Christian - and then came back earlier this year for what will be nine months. Convinced that Agape will now always be part of her life, she’s already making plans to return.

“Looking back now, on reflection, I believe that God has called me here but if you had of asked me (why I came) on my last visit, I wouldn’t have known why I was here,” says Bruce. “It was just a really strong desire.”

Bruce is no stranger to helping others. She’s previously worked in Australia with the children’s charity Barnardos for 15 years and has spent the last three working as a social and youth worker with pregnant teenage girls for the Red Cross.

“It’s my passion. It’s really hard to explain (but) when God moves your heart, you just have to respond.”

Bruce says she’s found working at Agape a struggle sometimes and that it has been difficult to explain to people back home why she’s uprooted not only herself, but her son, and travelled to a country thousands of kilometres away.

Then there’s the heat and the need to finance her stay. “Some days you think ‘Oh, it’s really hot, it’s like 40 degrees and the air conditioning’s not working in the car and we’ve got no air-con at home’ so you leave home hot and bothered and think, why am I here?” she says.

“And you walk in the door and then the kids come running up to you...and give you this big smile and hug and kiss and you just think, ‘Ah, that’s why I’m here’.”

As well as accomodation for the children, Agape also provides accomodation for mothers who are dying of AIDS to enable them to remain close to their children while they die. They’re also building a school on the site so that children don’t have to suffer the stigma that usually accompanies being an AIDS sufferer whether it be from students in the schoolyard or teachers in the classroom.

While sickness and death are constant at Agape, Bruce says there is much joy and happiness at the home - a point which can be witnessed in the sounds of children laughing in the background as we speak.

“Even when a child does die, the children - because they’re told about Jesus and how much Jesus loves them - they’re not afraid of dying....And their acceptance, it’s so childlike so that helps us as well.”

Yet there are also positive outcomes to celebrate. Bruce recalls one baby boy who, as well as suffering from AIDS, had white hair as a result of malnutrition. Given his state of health - and despite the possibility that children under two can move from being HIV positive to negative - staff at the home at not expected him to recover. But against the odds he had survived and thrived and moved to a state of being HIV negative.

As we prepare to leave, the staff at Agape are preparing for another day.

“Avis was just telling me tomorrow we’ve got a ninth month old coming in, and a four year old coming in whose mother died two days ago and her father had already died,” says Bruce. “She probably could be unwell...who knows what the future holds for them.”