South Africa # 5-HIV/AIDS: What You Don't See.

HIV is tough for visual media like TV to wrap itself around. What do you take a picture of? Funerals? Funerals happen all the time. Sick people? People get sick everywhere. Skinny people? Some people are just skinny, even in South Africa where chubbiness is prized. AIDS does not destroy property the way that a hurricane does, but it does end millions of human lives just as they are about to begin. No big Hollywood-style explosions (not yet anyway,) just the glacial advance of death. Over the course of three years, I watched small family plots become fully fledged graveyards, as people in their 20's and 30's returned home from the mines and the cities to die. What if you were to get up from your chair and go for a stroll in a real South African village in the Northwest Province, where the HIV infection rate is suspected to be as high as 33%? Do you see cadaverous people walking around? Hardly ever. Next, imagine that while you are touring the village, someone invites you in for tea. You are welcomed inside the house and are treated to hot milky tea, sweet biscuits, and good conversation. Do any of your hosts look visibly ill? Unlikely. What you don't know is that tucked away in a back bedroom is someone slowly dying of AIDS. This is an all too common situation in villages all over Southern Africa. Brothers, mothers, fathers, and sisters are all wasting away and unseen by anyone save their selfless caretakers and the closest of family friends. I have visited too many of these stale hidden rooms not to know that it is shame that keeps these people under wraps. It is shame that makes grieving relatives write "T.B." and "The flu" on the death certificates of people that clearly died of AIDS. My point is that, HIV is a thousand times worse than people in Europe and the USA have seen on TV, because so much of the illness defies the photographic process. In many ways, HIV is an invisible illness, from its transmission to its terrible conclusion. It is a tribute to the incredible strength of the African extended family that there hasn't been more social upheaval than there has. But even the strongest system has its limits. Today's picture is about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about-HIV/AIDS. I know that, even in our sweetest moments, we are in the presence of death. But, it seems unnatural to see so many die before they have a chance to live. I have seen too much of it.