World AIDS Day

My circle of friends and acquaintences is small. I know only one person who has died of AIDS, which is quite something to say in a country where so many are infected.

Vaughn was always a bit of an outsider. With jet-black hair and striking blue eyes, he was attractive - but an outsider nonetheless. His mom attended the church my dad pastored, and his sister was a class ahead of me in primary school. After a few years our lives parted.

I later saw him was at a friend's wedding. He was mere skin and bones. Post-high school he had entered the gay scene and there contracted this killer virus. Pre-anti-retroviral days there was virtually no treatment to keep him healthy and alive. A few months later I heard he had died.

That has been my sole personal experience with AIDS. I am one of the lucky ones. I am not at risk because I have chosen sexual abstinence and have not needed a blood transfusion. I could be at risk should I fall victim to rape or violent crime. Possible infection during my "wild" years has proved to be a lucky miss.

But many in South Africa and around the world are infected, living and dying with AIDS. It is eating away at our workforce, depleting the pool of experience and knowledge, tearing through families and creating child/parents who give up their lives to raise younger siblings once orphaned. Our government is either in denial, or failing to deliver on promised help. Other governments simply ignore the problem, hoping that if they can't see it, it's not there. Some work to create solutions in the face of incurable inevitability.

And today the world is remembering just what AIDS is all about. Tales of hope, stories of dispair. Lives affected, lives changed. Accidental infection, purposeful infection by someone who believes sex with a (very) young virgin will cure him. Beliefs and ignorance all hauled out and examined as today we pause and consider.

There is much we can do, those of us who have been left standing. Lobby for change, be there for sufferers, befriend and volunteer, adopt an AIDS orphan.

On this day, if on no other day, what will you do?