A very kind colleague of mine invited our family to her home for a Saturday afternoon Braai (South African for barbeque- very popular events down here). I was quite honored and impressed. It is no small task to invite a family of 8 to your home for dinner. Because of previous engagements and planned travel, we scheduled the event for the 14th of March with one caveat. She said we couldn’t have the get-together if someone in her family died. She proceeded to explain that she has 12 or 13 siblings and so does her husband. That makes for lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles. This weekend (Feb 14th) she and her husband are traveling to their home in the province of Mpumulanga to attend a funeral of a family member. She then proceeded to explain that the cause of these deaths in her family is HIV/AIDS and that there have been so many lately that they are sort of out energy to grieve anymore. They are just tired of the time, money, and efforts that it takes to attend, help pay for, and participate in all the ceremony around these deaths.
It’s one thing to read about or see on TV the tragedies of foreign countries, but now we meet people who are directly experiencing those tragedies in their lives: families dying out due to AIDS, refugees from the Rwandan genocide, and immigrants from the chaos of Zimbabwe. For those of you in the USA these are news stories, for us they are flesh and blood people that we know.
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Michael, your comments are a poignant reminder to us here in the USA that while our HIV/AIDS rates are not as high here, we can reach out by encouraging our pharmeceutical companies to make medical treatment accessible and to lobby our Congress to continue international aid monies for prevention work as well.
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