Is your Muppet HIV+?

A few years ago the South African Education Department purchased the rights to use and adapt Sesame Street to the South African market, aimed at pre-school education for those with no access to it, especially in the rural areas.

It's apparently been a good few years for the programme. It's left the Big Bird in favour of a Giant Mongoose, and made a number of other South African changes - so much so that at times I wonder why they even bothered buying the use of Sesame Street stuff! Certainly bears almost no resemblance to the original...

One of their latest additions was to make one of the characters HIV+ as a way of educating our littlest citizens in dealing with those that they know who are infected - a common occurance these days. It's been a brilliant move on their part. As uncomfortable as some of us are with the HIV/AIDS situation, it's a reality. It's better that our kids are educated - know what it's about, how you can and can't contract it, how to treat those who have it, etc. That someone who has HIV/AIDS is not to be feared and shunned, but treated with love and acceptance, helped in hard times as they deal with their illness.

Although I'm tempted to dismiss the programme as another boring, mindless kid's programme, with oft-repeating content, it's doing it's job. It's educating - and not just in maths skills, or how to buy groceries, or why the sky is blue, but in real-life issues that our kids have to deal with more and more.

On the flip-side, it would be great if our kids DIDN'T have exposure to all these problems. It would be wonderful if most kids in poor, gang-riddled areas (and others) had NOT seen someone shot in front of them, witnessed violence, been caught in gang crossfire or feared for their safety. It would be super if teachers didn't have to don rubber gloves before wiping a runny nose or patching a playground scrape.

But this is reality. This is the real, hard, difficult world. This is not heaven. There aren't many brave enough to dive in and help.

So hats off to those who are making an effort.