HIV/AIDS, Africa and The Least of These

     "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
     "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
     "The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'
     "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
     "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
     "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
     "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
     (Matthew 25:34-46, TNIV)

I'm not above breaking the rules on occasion. Today is one of those occasions. Here is Nicholas Kristof's TimesSelect column from this morning, in it's entirety.

A Plague of Orphans and Lonely Grandmothers
by Nicholas D. Kristof

MANZINI, Swaziland

In the early years of AIDS, the virus didn't get attention because the victims were marginalized people: gays, Haitians and hemophiliacs.

Then when AIDS did threaten mainstream America, it finally evoked empathy and research dollars. But now it has slipped back in our consciousness because once more the primary victims are marginalized people — this time, Africans.

Nearly three million people die from AIDS each year. Among them are half a million children under the age of 15, mostly Africans infected during childbirth.

The numbers are numbing, even paralyzing. So for a window into southern African village life today, meet two of those African kids whose lives are being destroyed by the world's inattention to AIDS: Wandile Shongwe and his sister, Temdoline.

Wandile, an 11-year-old boy speaking shyly in front of his hut in central Swaziland, told me his story. First his mother died, and then last year his father followed, along with his older brother.

So Wandile and Temdoline, who is 9, moved in with their grandmother, but a month ago she died of AIDS. They were shuffled off to their last surviving relative, an aunt, and now she is dying as well, and is too ill to care for them.

"Nobody will take care of them after my death," said the aunt, Buduzile Ngcamphalala.

But in fact, no one is really caring for them now. The aunt was too sick to plant corn in the family plot, so there is no food. She cannot buy clothes, so Temdoline's only dress is a school uniform so tattered that it has no seat and completely shows her underwear.

To preserve even that remnant of a dress, she takes it off when she gets home from school and puts on her only other bit of clothing: a pair of shorts, with no shirt. That would be too scandalous to wear to church, so she does not go.

To live such a childhood means not only unending trauma, but also unrelenting hunger. I asked the children whether they had had breakfast that morning. No. Dinner the night before? No. The only meal they regularly get is lunch at school, provided by the World Food Program's outstanding school-feeding program (www.wfp.org).

"Every day I go to school without breakfast," Temdoline said, "and every day I go to bed without dinner."

The children gather the firewood and water, and they wash their own clothes — as well as caring for their aunt. And soon the two orphans will be left to bury their aunt and then try to survive all alone.

"I feel very painful when she is sick," Wandile said of his aunt. "Because after she dies, no one is going to take care of us." (See video of Wandile, if you dare, in my multimedia report on AIDS at www.nytimes.com/kristof.)

After traveling in southern Africa to report on AIDS, on the 25th anniversary of the detection of the virus, I feel a compulsion to share stories of people like Wandile and Temdoline. They spill out of me.

The life expectancy in Swaziland, which has the highest infection rate in the world, with nearly 40 percent of adults infected, has fallen from 55 to 34. This is a land where parents routinely bury their children, and where mothers constantly learn that they have given their babies a death sentence — the AIDS virus — during childbirth or breastfeeding.

In rural Swaziland, a 74-year-old woman named Maria Shongwe told me that 9 of her 11 children have died, along with many of her grandchildren. (It's not certain that all died of AIDS, because so few people are tested that the cause of death is not always known.) I met her as she returned from preparing the body of a 24-year-old granddaughter for a funeral.

The only comparable apocalypse in historical times was the Black Death 650 years ago. But there is a difference.

In the 14th century, we didn't know how to fight the Plague. Today we know what to do, and we have the tools to overcome AIDS — and yet we still don't use them. A $4 dose of a medicine called nevirapine mostly blocks mother-to-child transmission of H.I.V. during childbirth, and yet because of poverty and governmental incompetence, at last count only 10 percent of pregnant African women with the virus got such a drug.

Maybe that's the saddest thing of all. Twenty-five years after we allowed AIDS to spin out of control because its victims were marginalized people, we're doing the same thing all over again. And so today, as every day, another 7,900 people will die of AIDS.

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So there it is. Think back to the definitons of Complacency and Complicity. I may be taking a hard line here but I still don't see a lot of grey area between complacency and complicity. The difference seems to be knowledge. You read the post, right? So now what do we do? What should you do? What should I do?

Comments

[wilsonian]

There are no words, but...
...I can't keep on in helplessness.

I need more options for things I can do. The things I'm able to do are doing nothing.

[CP]

I am participating in a Blogathon on July 29th to benefit the Pediatric AIDS Foundation and I was looking for like-minded individuals. Your name came up in my search. Thank you for posting a very relevant and poignant article about children growing up and living with HIV/AIDS.

Stop by the blog and check out the Blogathon! It's 24 hours of non-stop blogging to earn money for research for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation.

http://certifiableprincess.blogspot.com/

CP.