AIDS

The children of Uganda love to yell "Mzungu! Mzungu! How are you? Hello Mzungu!" and I say "I'm fine! How are you?" and they say "I'm fine! How are you?" and on we go for quite some time - until I am out of earshot.
Their mothers drag them along infront of us, but they turn around to yell - or they stop swinging on the rope swings that they love to make - four or five in line waiting for a turn - and yell "Mzung!"
I am overwhelmed by the consequence of AIDS in this country. I am overwhelmed by the devastation that it brings to the children that it's women bear - so many children - too many too feed - too many to clothe - too many to take care of, and not to dump off at the hospital, or the pit latrine, or an alley way.
Too many to all love at once. Too many to keep well all at once.
I am overwhelmed by the consequence of AIDS in one life - or three lives, in my case, working here. Three happy toddlers that cry and play and laugh and prattle to me like everyone else. They get in trouble - they come for comfort - they get dirty, and we bathe them. I brush their teeth. I wash their hands. I hold them. I love them. And I never knew which ones, until today, were HIV positive - and thus destined to a death sentence, or, should their live out their lives on medication that works quite well - although is very expensive - they will never have the freedom to pick and choose - this boy, or that girl to be with - this child to bear from my womb - this granddaughter that has my blood in her veins. To give love, for them, is to ruin another. To give life, for them, is to give death. And I wonder how they will take it when they know? When their minds wrap around what has been passed on to them - what will they do? How will it hit her at 10, when she has her first dreams of wedding gowns, or 15, when she has her first crush? Or him, when he finds out he's not like the others?
Or will they disregard it all and do what others do - and go ahead and pass death along...
How does this tangled mess unravel?
...and why must the consequences of the fathers visit so many generations beyond them?
My heart is heavy to think of the weight that they will bear - the weight on all their choices that does not exist for everyone else's - the level of knowledge about themselves that they must wake up every morning and grasp.
...and I have three, but there are millions. and i wish we thought about them more than we do - that we prayed for them more than we do - that we came to help them more than we do.

In many of the villages here, a man becomes more esteemed - creates a higher place for himself - if he rapes a virgin and gives her aids. Superstition is that perhaps the aids will leave him as he gives them to her.
So pray for the virgins of Africa. And pray for the children of Africa.
And pray for the children of Amani - the ones whose teeth I brush, whose hands I hold, who I cuddle and kiss and take for walks and whose benches I scoot in at the lunch table.
Their lives are forever changed by the sin of their fathers.