World Aids Day

This week we finally had to do some work that was new to us: We accompanied two of the Cotlands social workers on their regular trips to Soweto where they are doing home visits within the scope of one of our community projects. The children that we were visiting were between four and nine years old  and most of them mentally or physically disabled. Additionally they were all HIV positive and living in extremely poor circumstances. Even without any disability it must be hard to live in a small and leaky shanty at the uneven backyard of a little house… Anyway we went there to check if they are developing good, if they are getting their medication and to bring them a small Christmas present. It was very interesting to get a closer look at different families’ lives and homes but at the same time it was startling how such young children can be hit by so many strokes of fate.

Today we had the chance to join the later celebration of World Aids Day of a Cotlands support group for mothers with HIV positive children. As South Africa is the country with the second highest HIV rate in the world (ca. 18%) HIV is a very important subject here that unfortunately still doesn’t get enough attention. The celebration also took place in Soweto and about 50 people were taking place. At first many hopeful church songs were sung. After that some women had prepared little sketches and speeches but unfortunately most of it was in Zulu so that we couldn’t really understand a lot. Then everyone could write down a message to God. All in all we realized again that there was no sad mood like one could maybe expect at all. The atmosphere was much more happy because of the often repeated fact that you can have a happy life even if you are HIV infected and it was very impressive how many of these women arranged with their situations.

In the end many of the people came over and thanked us for attending the celebration and showing solicitousness and interest which made us a little bit speechless because we didn’t really feel as if we would have done anything that they would have to thank us for. Instead we were happy that they let us take part into the celebration. But that’s something that you also get used to in South Africa: Everyone is saying thank you for everything no matter how self-evident it seems to be.