Aids in the world/Africa- OFF TOPIC

[Didi Ananda Ruchira]

At 06-02-2005 Sunday, you wrote:

Dear All,

Just because Africa as a continent has more going for it than just AIDS, doesn't mean that it's not an issue here. (are we to hear every day about N. America's obesity problems on documentaries about economics? no we don't. on documentaries about economics we hear about economics.)

Yes, of course, there's a lot of optimism for the future on this continent. Does the TV have to fill up with only starving babies? Aren't you glad to hear something else for a change? Now, tell me if I'm to believe everything of what I see on TV is the whole picture of a diverse and multi-faceted continent.

Whatever may be the theories, speculations on the politics, true origins, or reality about a disease called AIDS, here in Kenya, there's not a single family -high or low, rich or poor- that doesn't have at least 1 death attributed to it. Most have several family members dead from this disease (or myth, if you insist). Many families have the whole 18-45 year generation wiped out.

Think about that... that would be equivalent of - say - of every family in USA (or your own country) having at least 1 death due to ....hmmm, what... car accidents? cancer? TB? Try to imagine that.
That every one of your neighbors -if not the neighbors themselves- would have several deaths in the family from the same causes?

An unprecedented number of grandmothers are having to bring up all the children of their own now-dead sons and daughters. I'm talking about old women who expected their sons to take care of them after a lifetime of hard work, and not having to spend their twilight years running after children, school fees and the worries that are usually given over to young energetic parents.

An unprecedented number of street children are coming up, a whole generation of youth - with no food, no shelter, no training, no morals, no hope for the future. They simply glue-sniff themselves to oblivion until it kills them by the age of 25.

In Kenya there's a growing shortage of the skilled and educated as AIDS takes its toll. A whole generation has been lost and another whole generation is growing up without that transmission of culture, family love and cohesion that comes from the family unit.

The daily obituaries are filled not with old, stalwart members of the community, but of young men and women under the age of 45. I never saw anything like it in other continents I've travelled.

An acquaitence once opined he thought of "phosphorus" as the "constitutional remedy" of AIDS. And in a lot of ways, its somehow true. On the macro level, the whole society is facing a complete "disorganisation of the blood". Kenya faces a lot of chaos made all the worse from the whole generation of the productive age group (20-45) being wiped out and disrupted.

In Kenya the turnaround has only just begun 3 or 5 years ago with the government finally accepting AIDS as a national disaster. It will take another 10-20 before it will recover itself if at all. There's a lot more problems in Africa besides AIDS and a lot more hope too. People do look beyond the day when AIDS is no longer a threat.

I have no comment on the theories, myths, conspiracies, pharmaceutical multi-national monopolies, politics, etc etc about AIDS. Whatever it is or isn't, it has decimated the society and economy here in Africa. Just saying "it's a political myth" doesn't make the fact of dying humans a myth.
Sincerely,
Didi Ananda Ruchira
Director, Abha Light
visit: www.abhalight.org
tel: +254 20 787310 / cell: 0733-895466