Babu on the Bad Road - The Best American Travel Writing 2013 - page 109

stillHIVpositive.ReverendKimerei furrowshisbrowandsays,“Thatisstrangebecausethe
volunteer I spoke to said she was tested and she was told she was negative.”
I ask Alma how she feels about the test result. She answers very quietly in Swahili. I feel
just fine. I was just fine before, and I am still okay .
I can't say for certain that Mwasapila's cure doesn't work. I can say that every account I
heard about somebody being cured by Babu of HIV/AIDS turned out to be either impossible
to verify or verifiably untrue.
Two doctors at separate hospitals confirmed they had multiple patients who, like Francis
Tesha, went to Samunge, stopped taking ARVs, and got sick and died. Pat Patten estimates
that several hundred people have died that way, and based on my small sample, his math
seems conservative. Perhaps the number would be higher if Reverend Kimerei and Dr. Kis-
anga hadn't insisted Mwasapila allow patients to continue taking Western medicine.
On the other hand, there were numerous accounts of people claiming to be cured of stom-
ach ulcers, aches and pains, insanity, and even diabetes. Multiple people echoed Dr. Kisanga
insayingtheyhadpatientswhosebloodsugarhadnormalizedaftertakingMwasapila'smedi-
cine. 7 It is tempting to think of the hundreds of thousands who visited Samunge as dupes,
but many clearly felt better after taking the cure. And while I certainly didn't find anything
to support Mwasapila's claim of a cure for HIV/AIDS, it took three weeks of intense ef-
fort—and a cultural background that predisposed me toward skepticism of faith healing—to
feel secure in discounting Mwasapila. Most Americans wouldn't spend three weeks invest-
igating the widely believed claims of their respected family doctor. We trust our appointed
healers, and Tanzanians trust theirs. After Alma's HIV test, Reverend Gabriel Kimerei was
troubled to hear so many people continued to test HIV positive, and embarrassed to have
passed on bad information.
“That embarrassment is to his credit,” Pat Patten tells me over the phone. Patten considers
manyTanzanianleaderstobecomplicitinaprolongedseriesofexaggerations—ifnotlies.In
a June newspaper editorial, he wrote about the profiteering ofthe bus,truck, and taxi drivers,
as well as the entrepreneurs and builders who found business booming because of Mwas-
apila. He noted that the government charges a hefty tax to all vehicles bound for Samunge,
and the Lutheran Church leaders “can now claim that one of their own, not a Pentecostal,
is the preeminent religious healer in the country.” Many government officials had chosen to
stake their reputations on Mwasapila's cure and risked embarrassment if they were shown to
be wrong. “All sorts of people benefit from these lies,” Patten wrote.
But the voices promoting Mwasapila seem to have fallen silent. In the months since I left
Tanzania, Patten saysMwasapila'spopularityhassteadily declined. TheHealth Ministrystill
hasn'tissuedtheresultsoftheirstudyabouttheliquid,andtheLutheranbishopsarenolonger