Sunday, December 12, 2004

AIDS x 13,000,000

A Guardian article, via 360 Degrees of Sky:

Example
Photograph: Gideon Mendel / Corbis

The Araújo family

My name is Sole Araújo and I am 15 years old. It was in 2000 that my parents started getting sick. I was still very young but because they were very ill, me and my sister Rebecca had to take care of them. We used to cook for them and also wash their clothes. We were doing everything for them. It was difficult. I was feeling so bad because I was very young. They lost their lives at the end. Before he died my father crawled from his bed to our neighbour Mama Clara's house to say that he wanted her to care for us and take us to school. My father lost his life in 2001, then my mother lost her life at the end of 2002. My mother also had a young baby, Ana, who had the problem of rash all throughout her body and she was always having some pains. She passed away before she completed one year.When the young ones are sad about our mother and father I invent some place or we start to play together so that they can forget. They are sometimes sad and sometimes happy, but most of the time they don't think about the past. My youngest brother Elias has been sick since long back. We have been trying to treat him because he has always had this problem of rash all over his body. He has been to the hospital a few times and I had to stay with him so I was not able to go to school. But now he does seem to be improving.