Hope House
Hidden behind the dramatic but all too real statistics are stories of both unimaginable suffering and innumerable triumphs of the human spirit; stories of care courage, fidelity and self sacrifice.
Over the past number of years I sense the slide of HIV/AIDS (Human Immune Deficiency Virus) from the forefront of public consciousness into the bracket ‘of other people’s problems.’
U Din Oo and his family’s story is retold/relived daily in some broken down hut in Myanmar.
U Din Oo was 42 years old when he came to our Hope House for people sick with HIV virus. He had lost contact with his family when he was 18 and like many men in the State he had drifted to the gold and jade mines. Life in these places is tough and full of risky behaviour choices beckoning.
U Din Oo followed the crowd and found himself embroiled in a network of drug abuse, night clubs, and living rough. Along the way he met a young woman, Than Than Myint whom he married and with whom he had two children.
In 2009 his health was at a debilitating stage and living had become a burden for him and for his family. Through a friend he came to know of the AIDS Clinic in Myitkyina where he and his wife were diagnosed as positive to HIV.
In the early days after being diagnosed he and his family suffered discrimination and isolation in their local neighbourhood.
When he came to stay at the Hope House the doctors had hoped that drug therapy would help prolong his life and that he could look forward to a future of providing and caring for his young children.
The next five months turned out to be a traumatic and painful time when his wife died unexpectedly. She had been dead almost a week before U Din Oo got home. The journey is 18 hours’ from the town with one boat a day and a seven hour walk. When he eventually got home his wife had been buried and his home had been burned by village elders; they believed his wife to be a witch.
His two young sons, aged nine and four were being cared for by neighbours. He stayed with his local community for a few days to help grasp the finality of his wife's death.
As the only parent to his two sons, and in poor health, U Din Oo returned to the Hope House to continue his treatment but soon after he was admitted to the local hospital.
Arrangements were made for the boys to come to the Hope House and say their ‘goodbyes’ and then 
be taken to an orphanage at their father’s request. It was obvious in their two young faces the depth and abandonment and fear at being sent away to the unknown.
U Din Oo died on January 13 and we decided to visit the orphanage and take the children out for their father’s burial. The Buddhist burial rile took place on a hillside outside the town of Myitkyina. It was presided over by three Buddhist monks and a small group of lay followers.
Sr Mary Dillon is a Columban Sister in Myanmar.
