AIDS Awareness

 Last Friday was International AIDS Day and we had a rally to increase HIV/AIDS awareness. The rally was a positive experience for all participants but I found the idea of increasing AIDS awareness ironic. I am surrounded by, almost overwhelmed by my awareness of the pandemic. In the States we ignore AIDS, here I am confronted with it daily.
• My shopping town, Vryheid, is small, comparable to a town in the California’s Central Valley – say Pixley, but it seems to have a funeral parlor, grave stone supplier or mortuary on every block.
• My supervisor is the minister of 4 rural churches; none of them exceed 100 members. He conducts funerals at least twice per month, this weekend alone he had two.
• I went to a meeting at the district Department of Health yesterday. On the wall I noticed a plaque entitled “10 Years of Freedom”. It honored the people who died while serving the Department of Health in the Zululand District in the ten years from 1994 to 2004. There were somewhere between 150 and 200 people listed, perhaps 20 died at an age greater than 50.
• The hospital doesn’t have the luxury of quietly transporting the deceased in camouflaged gurneys like Torrance Memorial Hospital did. I frequently look out my window and see gurneys covered with a white sheet with a red cross accompanied by nurses wearing face masks.
• In the last half kilometer to the taxi rank there are at least 5 HIV/AIDS related billboards.
• I walk through the wards of the hospital and see men who are mainly bones huddled on their beds.
• I don’t like to ask kids about their parents, the answer often is no parents.

When we go town on business we go in the hospital vehicles with hospital drivers. The driver and Susan, my wife, were talking about TV shows. The driver asked Susan, “Why don’t your (American) shows ever talk about AIDS?”