She had worked for a number of years in Uganda, where symptoms such as those just mentioned, spoke of what was called for want of a more accurate diagnosis, "the slimming disease". Nyambe climbed into the front of the ambulance with a little help and we set off.

We came to the military-operated pontoon on the Zambezi 50 km on. Regulations said that all passengers had to dismount from the vehicle, except the driver before it could be driven onto the pontoon. They were required to line up for the mandatory identity-card presentation and body-search. Since Nyambe was so ill the soldier on duty conceded, after some argument, that Nyambe could remain in the vehicle and would be spared the hassle of passing through the identity line-up. As I turned off the ignition of the ambulance after loading, Nyambe asked me to open the passenger window so that he could benefit from the air generated by our progress across the river. Once he had his head out the window he simply said "that's better".

Priority was given to the ambulance as we got off on the other side. Sr Margreat climbed in from the driver's side, checking her patient as she did so. My own attention was focused on manoeuvring the vehicle through the assortment of military vehicles that were trying to get on the pontoon and the droves of cattle that made their way close to the pontoon for a drink.

The noise and the sounds of so many human voices frightened the crocodiles away, and meant a safer visit to the water for the cattle.

I was barely back on the road, when the voice of Nyambe's wife, riding on the back of the open vehicle, rent the air. Her wail of MAWEEES MAWEES announced bad news. She pointed to Nyambe, whose head was slumped across the open window. As I brought the ambulance to a stand still, Sr Margaret whispered in my direction: "he's gone, he's gone. O God, we've lost him".

Becomes HIV infection and AIDS, 1984 Shortly after this incident, we got the news from San Francisco that a newly discovered immuno-deficiency virus was accountable for the catastrophic death rate among people there. It gave us the vocabulary we needed to make sense of "the slimming disease" in Sioma. Many our neighbours and friends were HIV+ and were likely to go on to develop full blown AIDS. Nyambe had been one who had not survived.

The campaign to manage the fallout of a 40% infection rate among sexually active adults has been waged in every parish and in every outstation of the community where I have made my home this past quarter-century. For many years now, every community of Christians, whether small or large, has its group of carers.

These are mostly women who go from house to house on a daily basis, to wash and feed those who are too ill to look after themselves.

They do basic education about HIV transmission, offer information on safer sexual life styles and nutrition. Their mission involves encouraging people to go for a test and support those who come home with bad news. In urban areas their brief sometimes includes the provision of supervision to young girls who find themselves head-of-household after the death of parents from AIDS. Such youngsters are often preyed upon by adult men whose beliefsystem includes the conviction that sexual contact with a virgin, no matter how young, works as an antidote to a HIV infection.

Window on contemporary mission in Africa My work and ministry, like that of most other Missionaries from Ireland andelsewhere, is currently organised by the need to support the efforts of the community-carers, educators and others, in conducting the effort against the spread of the HIV virus and against the catastrophic consequences of itsprogress through three generations.

KARA Counselling and Training is one very significant Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that has made the difference to thousands of people over the past 15 years or so. This organisation, spearheaded by Michael Kelly, a Jesuit from Kilkenny, was one of the early providers of counselling and testing facilities in the capital, Lusaka. I was lucky to have been available to head the counsellortraining programme at Kara at its inception.

My job also included the provision of supervision to the team of counsellors who prepared people for the HIV test, and accompanied them afterwards as they either dealt with the bad news of an infection, or developed safer lifestyles. KARA is now an NGO that is led by Zambians. It continues to be a major player in the task of training counsellors to higher levels of competency in many schools of therapy. It has recruited and trained counsellors who have a specialty in child and family therapy, gender therapy as well as in individual therapies that help clients address a wide range of life-problems. This expansion has brought with it new and demanding challenges for those of us who come from Europe. We need to constantly remake the shape and form of the theologies and psychologies that we bring to trainees and their clients, and make sure that they are sensitive to the beliefs and life-stories of local people.

The unrelenting rise in the levels of infection speaks volumes about the limited success that has attended the efforts of thousands of people over the past two decades to stem the tide of HIV infections. No single cause explains the poor success rate. One factor that has caught my attention is the widespread abuse of alcohol, especially at weekends. People who live sanely and safely from Monday to Friday, often go haywire on Saturday and Sunday.

Over the years, as I have grown more confident in identifying the patterns of weekend drinking and carelessness, I have come to realise that the best way open for me to build on the work that so many others have done, is to cooperate with a variety of interested groups in establishing a range of programmes that can address the abusive pattern of drinking behaviour in Zambia. The latest phase of my own career as a missionary is dedicated to the establishment of a residential treatment centre where people will be offer access to the resources they need to deal with problems associated with destructive drinking. The centre, Serenity House, is in its infancy.

There is a sense of right-fit in undertaking this project. I belong to the same religious community from which Fr Theobald launched his hugely influential temperance campaign throughout Ireland in the 1830s. In recent days the Irish Capuchins and a group of associates celebrated the 180th Anniversary of his birth, in Croke Park. At that gathering, they offered Fr Mathew as a model for the present generation as it grapples with the challenge of developing a balanced lifestyle, where alcohol consumption finds a sensible, non-toxic place in people's lives. That same offer will be remade at the Mount Errigal Hotel, in Letterkenny on 30 January when Dr Justin Brophy will address a Fr Mathew Conference on the theme of "A BALANCED LIFESTYLE for Contemporary Ireland".

There has been a lot of water over the Victoria Falls since I worked as a part time ambulance driver in 1983. Yet there is a common thread running through the variety of work and ministry that I have done in the 25 years in Zambia. It has been a search to find ways and means of being an effective ally of those villagers and urbanites who struggle to push back the waves of illness and poverty that have unrelentingly washed over Mother Africa.

>> Fr Philip Baxter is a Capuchin Franciscan who works in Zambia