The last few days have brought home in a very personal way the HIVAIDS crisis in southern Africa. We spent the weekend in Lesotho, a beautiful but impoverished little country surrounded by South Africa.
The poor of Lesotho survive on their fruit trees, small gardens and a few farm animals
The people work hard. Most homes or shacks have vegetable plots, which you don’t see a lot in poor areas of South Africa for reasons that I don’t understand. The houses, however poor, are very clean. People obviously spend what they can to improve their living conditions. The shacks gradually are replaced with one-room, concrete block structures. Over time, bricks are applied to the outside to make them look nice. Then, another room is added. People seem to take pride in their homes. Yet, Lesotho has the highest HIVAIDS rate in Africa. Poverty and lack of access to prenatal care and retroviral drugs is one reason. Another is that the country is so poor that people leave for South Africa in search of work. There, they find new partners, get infected and come home to infect their spouses in Lesotho. Many children are born HIV positive and TB is rampant.
One of the workers at the guest house where we stayed told us that his parents died of AIDS within a month of each other when he was only twelve. He then raised his two younger siblings, one of whom was only a toddler at the time. The two siblings are now in school. He works at the guest house to support them while continuing to go to high school part-time. He has been trying to get through high school for five years and has all but given up dreams of university. The village was full of young children, many of whom had terrible coughs, either from the common cold, TB or complications of HIVAIDS. They are supposed to go to school, according to the government, until grade eight, but many don’t. Their parents don’t have the money for school fees, or the children are too hungry to concentrate in a classroom.
Foreigners in Lesotho are like the Pied Piper to local children
When we returned from Lesotho, we learned that the cousin of our housekeeper had just lost his wife, leaving him with five young children. He works as a security guard in an affluent suburb. He and the children live in a shack in the township of Alexandria. Our housekeeper says there is no food in the house and no money for a funeral. As if that weren’t bad enough, our housekeeper says her cousin also seems to be ill and in denial about what is happening. The outcome, unless there is some intervention, will be another five orphans in a country full of AIDS orphans.
We who work with the Orphan Bracelets Campaign (www.orphanbracelet.org) will have to expand our client base, which is tragic. What is perhaps more tragic is that the HIV education campaigns in Southern Africa don’t seem to be working. People here often say, “I can’t have HIVAIDS because I am faithful to my partner.” People obviously don’t understand the nature of the illness or prevention. That leaves organizations like the Orphan Bracelet Campaign with a challenge that increases by the day. If you had seen those children in Lesotho this past weekend, you would know that we cannot give up.
Vicky O’Hara Johannesburg
