Killer of Dreams

[Guest guest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/04/opinion/04KRIS.html?th

 

October 4, 2003Killer of DreamsBy NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

WAMHLANGA, South Africa — One of the great mysteries to me about AIDS in Africa

has been this: Why do people not take precautions during sex even when they see

friends and relatives dying?

 

It's easy for Westerners to say that widespread promiscuity is the root of the

AIDS problem in Africa, where the virus is transmitted mainly by heterosexual

contact. And there's definitely something to that. But the reasons for reckless

promiscuity go beyond hormones, and I came to understood them better near this

town of KwaMhlanga in the northeastern part of South Africa, in the tin shack

where Gertrude Tobela frets about her teenage daughter.

 

Ms. Tobela, 34, slim and quick to smile — and now to cry — is the first in her

family to graduate from elementary school, high school or college. Two years

ago, she was at the top of her world, preparing to graduate from the university,

have her second child and join the middle class.

 

Now she is another African widow, poor, dying and heartbroken because she cannot

protect her children from the same fate. She is but one of 30 million Africans

with H.I.V./AIDS (24 will die of it while you're reading this column), but her

tale underscores how H.I.V. in Africa is not just a virus but also a

self-replicating cycle of AIDS, poverty and hopelessness.

 

Ms. Tobela's world began to collapse when her husband, Simon, an electrician,

was found to have AIDS. Then she tested positive for H.I.V., apparently after

getting it from him. And her newborn son, Victor, turned out to have caught the

virus from her.

 

Her husband died last year, and she is now too sick to hold a job. She survives

on $22.50 a month in government child support and spends her time wondering

about who should raise Victor after her death.

 

" I think maybe if I die first, before him, then maybe my mother can take

Victor, " she says, her voice catching.

 

Ms. Tobela seems typical of Africa's AIDS victims. In Africa, 58 percent of

H.I.V. carriers are female, and among teenagers with H.I.V., more than 75

percent are girls. This is largely because of an explosion in quasi prostitution

between young girls and older men.

 

" It's not just promiscuity, " said Blanche Pitt, director of the South Africa

office of the African Medical and Research Foundation. " It's poverty. It's

desperation. "

 

As young women become infected, so do their babies. One-fifth of pregnant women

in southern Africa have H.I.V., and worldwide, 800,000 babies a year get H.I.V.

from their mothers.

 

Ms. Tobela managed to talk in a composed way about her death and Victor's. But

she broke down when I asked about her 14-year-old daughter, Thabang (she has a

different surname, which I'll keep to myself).

 

" My daughter left me because she wants liberty, " Ms. Tobela said, weeping. " She

is so sexually active, and she stays in bars and rental rooms. "

 

It began in June, when Thabang began coming home late. Ms. Tobela screamed at

her and then beat her, but it did no good. The girl ran off to live with her

grandmother, but then stayed away for days at a time. After the grandmother beat

Thabang as well, she ran away again.

 

I searched the town for Thabang, and finally found her at a relative's house.

She is very pretty, with a fondness for makeup, well spoken and smart. I told

her that her mom scolded her only because she loved her. Thabang began to cry.

 

" She doesn't love me, " she said fiercely. " If she did, she would talk to me

instead of beating me. She wouldn't say these things about me. She would accept

my friends. " Thabang insisted that while her friends slept with men for cash or

gifts, she did not.

 

Why would girls who have seen what AIDS can do commit suicide by sex?

 

Part of the answer is that the disease carries a mechanism for perpetuating

itself: it first devastates families financially and emotionally, then leaves

adults unable to mind their children, and finally breeds crippling despair.

Death, poverty and hopelessness so suffuse Ms. Tobela's tin shack that I can

imagine them impelling a mixed-up 14-year-old girl into the arms of older men

for a few coins.

 

When a girl's mother and brother are dying, when a family's middle-class dreams

collapse in a ramshackle hut, when there isn't enough money to pay for Victor's

visits to the doctor — when a girl's world is shattering in slow motion — she

doesn't know what to live for.

 

And so AIDS insinuates itself into the next generation.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

 

NEW WEB MESSAGE BOARDS - JOIN HERE.

Alternative Medicine Message Boards.Info

http://alternative-medicine-message-boards.info

 

 

 

The New with improved product search