Did you know that today was World AIDS Day? No…me neither. I just happened to see it on my newsfeed on Yahoo or Google or something today. To me, EVERY day is world AIDS day. When you live in a population where more than 40% of those you meet are most likely infected with HIV…
…when you bring a newborn baby to a sub-standard hospital with a staph infection that has ravaged his body and have to send the mother to collect the body a few days later…
…when you look into the eyes of a young mother who just found out she is HIV positive, and she happens to be breastfeeding her baby son and is now being told she should stop due to her diagnosis but she has no idea how she will afford buying formula or bottles or nipples or get access to clean water…
…when you talk to a young woman who knows she is HIV positive and wants the father of her child to marry her…yet he has told her that if she is infected he would “rather climb a mountain and die” than marry her…and she is asking you advice on if she should be honest with her groom to be…
…when you sit in a tiny dwelling, watching a young man struggling to take his next breath…yet his eyes are wide because he can’t believe anyone has come to visit since his family and community seemed to have forgotten him…
Read the article that alerted me to it being World AIDS Day by clicking on this link here…
The thing is…I KNOW these kids! Maybe not the exact individuals written about in this article…but I have met and known and loved children just like those profiled in this article… I’ve held them and kissed them and prayed FOR them…
Yeah….
World AIDS Day doesn’t seem to only occupy one square on the wall calender.
The devastation that AIDS brings is felt every single day of the year by so many…including those of us working here in Swaziland.
But we are not the only ones.
Are we?
OH CHURCH…I hope not…
