Around
the World:
A
LEGACY OF LOVE
by Joyce Maynard
Part Three
WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
Orphanages in Uganda and throughout sub-Saharan Africa are now filled way beyond capacity with children left behind by the AIDS epidemic. An estimated one in every four families -- many of them headed by grandparents -- are caring for children who have lost parents to the disease. One 70-vear-old woman lost all 11 of her children to AIDS and now cares for their 35 children.
Florence hopes that after her death, her mother, Agatha, now 47, will be able to care for her children. It will be an extraordinary burden. Agatha still supports her family on what she can make selling produce. Education is the only way Agatha's children and grandchildren can get ahead, she knows. But paying for it takes much more than she makes.
Agatha studies Florence, Jackie, and Ronald, playing in the yard with their homemade soccer ball with a group of village children, and beyond them, her dry little patch of cassava, and shakes her head. Meeting her, you can see where Florence gets her beauty and her broad, open smile.
"I have not had an easy life," Agatha says quietly, speaking of her husband's murder and the years of oppression after that. But seeing her own daughter falling ill is harder than anything she's ever known. "I lie awake and wonder what to do," she says.
Like her mother, Florence desperately wants her children to have a good education. On one page in Ronald's memory book, she has pasted a photograph of herself in her cap and gown, with her mother at her side. It was taken on the day she received the diploma to become a nursery school teacher. She has written "Learning is the key to life" under the photograph. "I put that picture in Ronald's book to give him something to aim for," she says.
Now Florence is behind in paying her children's school fees, and the principal is threatening to send them home. She has been looking for a second job, even though she knows she needs to conserve her energy. Lately, headaches have been a problem. So she tries her best to save and be as resourceful as possible. What toys her children have are all homemade.
One of Ronald and Jackie's favorites is the "TV set" she recently made out of cardboard. It's a box with a hole in the front that serves as a screen. On either side of the box, she has made slits for a long strip of paper pieced together with tape and illustrated with drawings. The children like to sit in front of the box while Florence pulls the paper through the holes telling the story. She plans to make them a new "TV show" as soon as she gets more paper.
Knowing how little she can provide for her children's material needs -- and the challenges that likely await them -- makes her memory books for Ronald and Jackie all the more precious. "My own father died before he got a chance to tell us about our history, our ancestors, and their customs. My mother can tell me the stories she knows, but many others were lost. My children will have those stories," she says.
"YOU HAVE MADE ME SO HAPPY"
A couple of years ago, at the clinic where she goes for the nutritional supplements and antimalaria pills that help keep her strong, Florence met Stephen Senabulya, a large and gentle-looking man who lost his wife to AIDS around the time she lost Peter. He, too, is HIV-positive. A friendship developed, and now she and her children live with Stephen.
"We take care of each other," she says. "When I need someone to talk to about how I feel, he understands. I do the same for him. We love each other." Ronald sometimes asks her, "Mummy, when can we have another baby?" But both she and Stephen know that is out of the question. "We practice safe sex," Florence says. "Neither one of us wants to leave any more children without their parents, or who are sick themselves."
It's sunset, and Stephen, who is a handyman for a small relief agency in Kampala, has just come home from work. Outside the house, Florence has lit a fire in the little charcoal stove where she cooks dinner -- beans and matoke, a dish made of bananas cooked with rice and wrapped in banana leaves.
Stephen lifts Jackie high over his head and hugs her to his chest as Ronald runs to show him a picture he's made. Then the four of them head down the dirt road outside their little house to take a walk before dinner.
Looking out over the hills of Kampala, dotted with banana trees, mangoes, and cassavas, with the mooing of cows in the distance and a hawk circling overhead, the entire scene looks idyllic. A breeze blows across the fields. Ronald, running ahead, bursts into a series of cartwheels, one after another. Jackie breaks into a dance. Florence throws back her head as she laughs. Stephen, his arm touching her back, stands proud and tall, watching. Anyone looking at the four of them could think this was a family blessed with rare good fortune.
The last page in Ronald's book was the one Florence found the most difficult to write. It is titled "My Hopes for Your Future."
After dinner, she reads that section out loud: "When you grow up," she has written, "never forget your sister. Make sure she goes to school also. Make sure she doesn't think of marriage until she, too, has gotten her education somehow.
"Don't be a womanizer," she admonishes. "Have one wife. And when you and your wife have misunderstandings, as every couple does, you should sit in your bedroom and discuss your problems. Don't beat her. Talk to her.
"At my funeral, please thank all the people who have been beside me. Some are now dead, but they are still with me, so thank them also. And thank the people who came to my funeral. And say that I thank them for looking after you and your sister whenever they can."
There is not a trace
of self-pity as she reads these words. At one point, the soccer ball that
Ronald has been kicking in the yard -- made from old plastic bags, held
together with a rubber hand -- bounces onto her lap. She tosses it back,
laughing, and then continues to read.
"Remember always, you have made me happy every single day I'm alive."
HOW YOU CAN HELP
The numbers
are so vast it's hard to grasp their meaning: 12 million people in sub-Saharan
Africa are already dead from the virus, with approximately 11,000 on the
continent newly infected every day. By the end of this year, an estimated
10 million children under the age of 15 in sub-Saharan Africa win have
lost one or both of their parents to the disease.
Many international relief agencies, including Save the Children, are working to prevent the spread of AIDS in Africa and caring for those who are sick. Their HIV/AIDS programs help build public awareness, strengthen families' capacity to care for those affected by the disease, and, in particular, help the growing number of orphans left by the epidemic.
Redbook readers can help support these programs in Uganda and throughout Africa by donating to a special account at Save the Children. To contribute, send checks or money orders to:
Save the Children, Africa/AlDS, P.0. Box 975, Westport, CT 06881
You can also contribute
online at www.savethechildren.org.
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