When Eunice Mangwane, one of the central figures on the Keiskamma Altarpiece, tells her story, the altarpiece becomes more than a work of art; it becomes a living testimony to the work of God in the world. The Keiskamma Altarpiece was made by more than 120 South African residents, mostly women, of the small fishing village of Hamburg where nearly one third of the population has died of HIV/AIDS. It is a sensory feast and a profoundly moving expression of the ravages of AIDS that also proclaims a message of deep joy, wonder, and hope. And Eunice Mangwane, a self-described housewife and mother of two, is in large part responsible for its existence.

When Eunice’s husband retired in 1996, she convinced him to let her move from Hamburg to Cape Town to earn money. There she paid little attention to the banner on the Anglican church advertising HIV/AIDS information workshops, but one day her irrepressible curiosity got the better of her, and she signed up. That decision transformed Eunice. Like many others, she had believed that HIV/AIDS was a white person’s disease that happened far away and would never affect her. But after she learned to recognize the symptoms, she realized that five children living just two doors away had all died of AIDS. Eunice felt compelled to gather as much information as she could and to talk to people about HIV/AIDS at every opportunity.

After her husband died in 1999, Eunice returned to Hamburg, not knowing how she would care for the family’s cattle and still earn sufficient wages. One day Dr. Carol Hofmeyr, a medical doctor with a fine arts degree whose husband Justus had opened an AIDS clinic in Hamburg, approached Eunice about working as an unpaid AIDS counselor. When Carol finally found a generous benefactor to pay Eunice, she happily agreed. But the people of Hamburg did not want to be educated about HIV/AIDS. They were suspicious because Eunice had not been born in Hamburg, and because she was working with a white woman. They believed AIDS was caused by “a white man who spread powder on a plane,” or by witchcraft, or by condoms.
So Eunice took her pamphlets and her umbrella and went to neighboring villages, but she met resistance everywhere she went. People refused to speak with her, and she walked long distances between villages because no one would give her a ride. Once she entered a village and saw a large poster of herself warning people to avoid her because she spread AIDS. At that moment she considered quitting, but as she wondered who had taken the photo, words came to her: You haven’t finished your destination yet. And so she kept on. Her daughters saw the photo and called her. “Stop your work and come home,” they said. “We’re afraid someone will burn the house down.” Eunice walked on to the next village. When she returned home, her in-laws instructed her to pack her things and leave. “Your husband died a long time ago,” they said. “You are doing bad work; you must go.” Eunice refused to leave.

Eventually people started coming to Eunice for information and HIV tests, in secret at first and later more openly. In addition to educating people, Eunice began to care for infected people at her own home. One man, who stayed with Eunice while recovering from illnesses and learning to care for himself, confessed that he had taken the photo that had almost caused her to quit, intending to get her beaten or killed. “I’m telling you this,” he said, “because I’m asking for your forgiveness.” “Of course I forgive you,” she said. “Who am I not to forgive you? Who of us has not done things they are sorry for?” There was too much work to be done in the village to harbor grudges.

Carol returned from a vacation in Colmar in Alsace, France with photographs and a story about the Isenheim Altarpiece, a 13- by 22-foot three-layer work painted in 1515 commemorating the plague of St. Anthony’s fire or ergotism, a painful skin disease contracted by eating fungus-ridden rye that causes open sores and death. Carol felt that the parallels to the HIV/AIDS in South Africa were striking, and she insisted that Eunice help convince the women of Hamburg to make something similar.

As with the AIDS education program, nobody wanted to participate at first. They were suspicious of Eunice and Carol; they feared infection from the altarpiece materials. For six months, Eunice tried to convince women to work on the altarpiece, but found few who were willing. Then one day a group of women came to the center and said they wanted to work on the altarpiece. Eunice has no idea why they suddenly wanted to come, but she says they wanted to earn money. For them, poverty was a more pressing problem than HIV/AIDS, and they needed the meager wages — the best they’d ever earned.

While working in groups of 10, the women began to sing together, to tell stories to each other, and to talk. Sometimes Eunice would use the opportunity to teach the women about HIV/AIDS, to explain why they could not get infected from the cloth, how HIV was transmitted, how they could protect themselves from being infected, and how to take care of themselves if they were HIV positive. Over the altarpiece, the women talked about those they had lost or were losing to the disease. Some women even died during the creation of the altarpiece — their names are embroidered around the trees and the river depicted on the third layer.

Eunice understands the value of talking, as her work shows. “It annoys me a lot when women don’t want to talk,” she says. “When they are too frightened. It is good to be frightened, but don’t be too frightened. We’ll lose our opportunities because of being too frightened.” As the women of Hamburg shared their experiences of fear and grief, they began to acknowledge the impact of AIDS on their lives. The altarpiece is therefore not just a product manufactured by a community; it is the work of people brought together by poverty, oppression, and disease, embodying the process of doing God’s work in the world and building a beloved community.