HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of your friends here at The Sexy Monastery. Today's strange drawing deals with the circular nature of life-birth, growth, struggle, death, and rebirth. These are issues that everyone in Southern Africa is forced to deal with more often than most of us living relatively comfortable lives in Europe and North America, because of the realities of poverty, HIV/AIDS, and its related horrors. In my position as an HIV/safe sex educator, I spoke to a great many teenagers who did not expect to live past their 25th birthday. The result is a strange combination of fatalism, joy, and sadness that you seldom find outside of a Hindu funeral. Most of the teenagers that I spoke to wanted to pack 80 years worth of living into a (possibly) much smaller stretch of time-love, children, education, worship, and work, all in the space of a few years. And, many of them are pulling it off too. If you live in one of the "safer" parts of the world, you may have playfully asked yourself at one time or another: What would I do if I found out that I only had a year to live? After three years of seeing death after death in South Africa (and though I remain HIV negative and healthy), this question seemed far from playful. I felt the need to break away. When I returned to the U.S. in December of 2005, I decided that I wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail from one end to the other. I started at Springer Mountain in Georgia on February 22, 2006, and found myself 7 1/2 months and 2,175 miles later, on top of Mount Katahdin in Maine. It was a very irresponsible thing to do. It was also the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. So many young people in Southern Africa don't have to pretend what they would do if given a death sentence, because they already have one. They see their friends and lovers die or find telltale signs of the virus's work on their bodies. My friends in South Africa taught me many lessons, but none as valuable as their example of courage and strength in the face of life and death. I have used their example to go farther than I ever thought that I could go. In the year to come, I hope that you are half as fortunate as I have been. Next time: Snakes in Tswana Culture.
