The True Tragedy of AIDS :: AIDS

The True Tragedy of AIDS When I was in South Africa, I spent some time in a township called village, which essentially began as a squatter battalion for immigrants looking for work near Cape Town. In the late 80s and primeval 90s, to make room for an alleged development project, the apartheid government tried to relocate the settlers. Whatever the reasons, entire sections of the settlement were razed. Many people did not urgency to move and, consequently, their resistance was met with arson and both random and targeted violence legion(predicate) of the victims were women and young children. The settlers sense of security, albeit loosely bound with wood and corrugated iron, was destroyed. In 1994, as democracy came to South Africa, the settlers who remained began to rebuild their community out of the wreckage of apartheid, exactly to be confronted by a powerful new enemy AIDS. For me, Crossroads became an example of the conflicting reality in South Africa today - oddment and resilience, hope and continual struggle. Crossroads is now home to Beautiful Gate, a home for dozens of children living with HIV/AIDS whose parents are each unable to take care of them or corroborate already died. converted from what was once a place for troubled youth, Beautiful Gate is encircled by an imposing fence I thought this was unusual to rescue around a place for sick children. On the windows are metal bars, which I originally thought were thither to protect the children from violence caused by the stigma surrounding AIDS. I was wrong. In fact, the bars are there because people had tried to steal food...because in Crossroads only half(prenominal) of the people can find work and they are desperate to embody themselves. Some of us were able to visit Beautiful Gate a couple times, and I remember talking to Francis Herbert, the social worker there. I asked her why she continued to work there. How could she continue to work when essentially no one was listening, when the government was faced with so many problems it couldnt pay attention, when she knew that for both child that stays at Beautiful Gate, dozens, actually thousands, more have no place to go. Why? Francis looked at me with a puzzled face. She does what she does because it has to be done. I see now how obvious that answer was. And I stimulate now that Francis and others working in similar conditions will keep contact a brick wall unless people like myself use our knowledge of the unkindness of AIDS to mobilize international support.