There is no me without you.......

Here's a wee something I read yesterday in a book I won't be able to finish before the library wants it back. It's called There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene and is mostly about the crisis of AIDS in Africa--no drugs=millions of orphans that can not be cared for by extended family (like in old days, as there have always been orphans) because there are SO MANY. And it blames the west. Rightly so. The thought of AIDS scares the crap out of us, but we at least have drugs that doesn't make it an immediate death sentance.

So here are a few quotes that I like for various reasons. If you like them, you should pick up the book....I got it from KPL for free!!! :)

(Comparing clinics to American Idol or Survivor):
These programs are "reality shows."
In Africa, by the hundreds and thousands and millions, but one by one, a person sits in a clinic waiting room, jumpy or still, feeling fine or feeling nauseaous, coughing or not coughing. Or she squats outside in the dirt yard, holding her head in her hand, occasionally looking up and calling to her children not to wander too far. Each waits to hear his or her name called. Inside the examining room, a doctor or nurse or nurse's aide examines a slip of paper and looks up. The eyes speak first.
Negative: You advance to the next round. See you tomorrow.
Positive: America has voted. Your journey ends here.
There are no television cameras.
No viewers at home are cheering or weeping.
No viewers at home phoned in their individual votes. Most never knew anything was at stake.
"I have heard there are treatments," a woman will whisper.
"Not in our country," the doctor will say with a sad smile.
"Does it mean I will die soon?" a man will ask.
"Yes, I'm afraid that is what it means."
"I thought perhaps I just had a cold."
"No, I'm afraid not."
"...I have heard that there is holy water which is effective?"
"No. That is a myth."
"As I supposed. Thank you, Doctor."

Speaking of the woman who is the subject of the book, who opened her home to the orphans in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia):
It was perhaps [her] own chronic mourning that compelled her to hesitate, to hold her door ajar, when strangers materialized in the lane and asked for her help. She instantly recognized the pain of fellow mourners and would not abuse them.
Sometimes it felt as if she, too, waited for someone.
This slight gap in the imprenetrable landscape--door after door closed to the afflicted, clergy preaching against them, their own families stonily denying them--had been discovered. Somehow the untouchables had found this woman who did not shriek insults, throw rocks, or shake a broom at them before slamming the door in their faces. Now they rode by bus or by donkey, they hiked or they limped, toward the brick house......

So what's our response? I don't know, except to do whatever possible to stop the mad torrent. Here's a small thing I did: With the birthday money sent to me by my parents & grandma I bought a child's life somewhere in Africa. On the World Vision site, you can purchase AIDS medication for a pregnant mother, so that her child doesn't get AIDS and so she can be treated during her pregnancy with anti-retroviral medication. There's so much more I want to do. Drug companies can make drugs so cheaply; they do all the time in India, and the drugs are the same quality as what we get here. But every corporation in the world is about the bottom line, aren't they?

If this is really pulling at you, you should also see The Constant Gardner. It's about drug companies and Africa (although not a documentary).

You want to make a difference? You want to be the generation who saves Africa, like the whole Live 8 thing was supposed to be about? Do something about treating adults with AIDS, because children don't need more orphanages built in Africa filled with foreign workers. They need their parents not to die from AIDS so they can be raised by their parents. Would you rather have been raised in an orphanage or with your own parents and siblings?

(And yes, I'm still employed. I know that two posts in a week might have confused some of you on that point. You see what kind of posts I make when I have time to think about important things?)