African Insights - February 2003

Aids-Africa-Dignity and Hope…Thoughts...

AS you read this, 30 million Africans are living without a future and a hope.  Their life in its present form is a mere existence and only death seems to hold any relief from the present pain and suffering pf HIV-AIDS.  There is no medicine, if there was, the cost would be beyond most Africans and since most AIDS victims can no longer work, they simply await death and in many cases, they die alone.

President Busch in his State of the Union speech (January 2003) addressed the problem of AIDS in Africa, spoke of the 30 million afflicted with the deadly disease, spoke of 3million orphans, (Uganda has well over 1.5 million alone) and surprisingly spoke of a total of 15 billion dollars going to 14 nations to combat AIDS if congress authorizes it.

30 million AIDS sufferers, 3 million orphans, and 15 billion dollars.   To most of us they are simply numbers, statistics, and figures.  What is more important is the fact that there are real people behind those numbers.  Living people, fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts, families, clans, tribes, regions, nations.  There are lives represented, lives that without help will soon wilt in the barrenness of suffering and dry up and die.

I have met some of those statistics first hand, from young to old, most of them are dead by now, but the impact of their lives is still with me as fresh as the day when I met them.

Since President’s Bush address in which he spoke of making a major impact in Africa with regards to AIDS and some of the other diseases that rob Africans of future dreams, the talk shows on Radio have been buzzing with wasting money in distant Africa and why not spend such money in the USA on Americans who certainly need help first instead of squandering it in Africa where it will not reach the ones who really need help and if it does reach them, it will only be a license for more promiscuity and a further spread of AIDS once they receive medication and help.

As I listened to these callers and talk show hosts’ feelings of anger, sadness, pity swept over me and with it the realization that many Americans have a very limited worldview.  For years we have lived protected by two oceans from the reality of the rest of the world.  Our local newspapers and media keep dropping more and more International news in favor of relevant local reporting such as latest restaurant opening while our window of the world keeps shrinking away, becoming smaller and smaller and our world view more and more limited by the lack of information which we get from the nightly news and local newspapers and “We are the world – we are the children” is merely a nice song to listen to, but not do anything about.

Should the USA help Africa with 15 Billion dollars?  The answer is an emphatic yes.  For years, going back to the discovery of Africa by the Western World, Africa has been used as a supplier of raw materials for the Western World.  Much of the United States, South America, the Caribbean, was built on the backs of African Slave Labor.  Even when one ventures into the Eastern world one would find the traces of African slaves going all the way into China, with India, Islands in the Indian Ocean, Iran and Iraq all benefiting from the men, women and children stripped from Mother Africa.  Many parts of Africa became uninhabited wastelands because whole tribes were shipped to places as varied as Brazil and Zanzibar.

When slavery was eliminated, Colonialism with its various hues kept the spirit of extraction of things from Africa alive.  Slavery was now in-house and European countries used forced labor to harvest rubber, coffee, cotton, tea, spices, gold, diamonds, copper and countless of other things from Africa while the African lived on less and less, without freedom, liberty, land and the pursuit of a peaceable life.

I am very glad that President Busch has taken this position of helping Africa in its present crisis and it is my hope that other nations, who have benefited and prospered from Africa will follow this lead and example and make a contribution to the welfare and future of Africans.

Africans like the assistant Minister of Health who I met in Rwanda who had only a few months of life ahead of him and was concerned about the well being of his nieces and nephews and their schooling.  Like the little boy I met in Kisumu, Kenya who was born with AIDS and even as he was born into this world he was already dying.  Africans like the waitress in Kampala, the guard at the grocery store, all suffering from AIDS.  I pray to see the day when the business of the casket makers on Entebbe road diminishes and African highways are no longer referred to as AIDS highways and AIDS has been reduced and eliminated. 

Uganda, with virtually no major help has decreased the new infections of AIDS and all the government agencies, mosques and churches have joined in the battle against this deadly disease.  The stigma of AIDS has been virtually wiped out and people, including leaders have freely acknowledged that they too have AIDS and pleaded with others to take steps to eliminate the dreaded spread of the AIDS virus…and yes, it is working.  Now with the help from the United States and other countries, with the Drug companies making medicines available at reduced cost, the battle can be slowly won and Africa can live again and then we can truly sing, “ We are the world…”

A few years back I met a woman with two small children in a slum near Makerere University.  She was dying of AIDS, and she had not family to take care of her children.  She had gone everywhere to gain help for her children since soon she would be gone and all she found was closed doors.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes “No one cares, no one cares for me or my children.”  My thoughts go back to that day…and I hope we can tell her children…that someone cares…. someone does want to make a difference in Africa…and hopefully we can look beyond money needed to the benefits it will bring to living people who otherwise would die…jon

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