"our second selves" by tim barrus

"Have you ever seen a child who has been violated and infected with HIV die from AIDS.

We fail these children over and over"

The Convention on the Rights of the Child’s two Optional Protocols  are two superhighways for the trafficking and transmission of HIVAIDS and related and ongoing human rights violations:

i)    Involvement of children in armed conflict

ii)   Sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography

The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of the Child urges all levels of governance to use the Convention as a guide in policy-making and implementation, and urges EVERYONE:

·     To raise awareness and disseminate information on the Convention by providing training to all those involved in government policy-making and working with or for children.

·   To involve civil society—including children themselves—in the process of implementing and raising awareness of child rights.

HOME  by Berry Bickle, M.A.

Bulawayo, I am from Bulawayo, the second city of Zimbabwe. On a return to Home, I found, saw, so many people wearing the black patch of mourning attached to their shirts. I knew what the patch meant and for whom it was worn; a generation decimated by AIDS and parents burying their children. It was with profound grief that I created HOME.

Human Ingenuity, Knowledge, Wealth, Compassion and Passion.

As social beings our health and well-being, our peace of mind, indeed our humanity, is directly related to the health and well-being of those around us. With the knowledge that TODAY hundreds of millions of men, women, adolescents and children are affected, it becomes all about choices. What we choose to believe, to accept and how we behave, sends a clear and present message to our children as they emerge into their adulthood and create their own social and cultural communities, and families.

More than 1,000 children are newly infected with HIV every day and of these more than half will die as a result of AIDS, because of a lack of access to HIV treatment.  Tens of millions more children are affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as the survivors of death and suffering in their families and communities.

History will judge what we choose TO DO accordingly.

President Barrack Obama (July 2010)

Success will require the commitment of governments at all levels, businesses, faith communities, philanthropy, the scientific and medical communities, educational institutions, people living with HIV, and others. 

 

"A Mother's Grief" by Kim Berman (© Art For Humanity)

"Looking up" by Finuala Dowling (© Art For Humanity)

The moment before you died

You looked up,

The way all children look up: hopefully.

You were expecting us to come

But we didn't come.

You see --

The economy has been growing at 3.2% per year

Many of our shopping malls have parking for over 1000 cars

Things have been looking up

We've had a lot of new stuff to look after

Of course, when we read how you'd died,

You had three hundred thousand mothers;

You had four hundred thousand fathers.

Yet it's true that the moment before you died,

You loked up, and no one came.

 

Impucuko (IsiXhosa translation)

Umzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu

Ngendlela bonke abantwana abajonga ngayo: ngethemba.

Ubulindele okokuba sifike

Kodwa zange sifike.

Uyabona ke --

Uqoqosho lunyuke kakuhle ngonyaka

iivenkile zethu ezinkulu zineendawo zokupaka iimoto ezingaphezu kwewaka

Izinto ziye zaphucuka

Besinezinto ezininzi ezintsha esinokujonga kuzo

Kaloku, sakuba sifunde indlela obusweleke ngayo

Ubunentlaninge yoomama;

Ubunentlaninge yootata.

Nangona, uthe ngomzuzwana phambi kokuba usweleke

Wajonga phezulu,

Kodwa akwabikho

namnye ufikayo.

A poem about HIV/AIDS filmed in the Umzinyahi Village near Durban, South Africa. This girl lives in the Sihawukelwe Lauren Children's Home for AIDS Orphans.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

Michel SidibÃ, Executive Director of UNAIDS

"This epidemic unfortunately remains an epidemic of women"

An estimated 18 million women are living with HIV/AIDS. This estimate is based on figures submitted by local government departments around the world and reflects ONLY the numbers of women who have been tested. The AIDS epidemic has had a unique impact on women, due to their cultural roles and  personal stories within our societies, and their heightened biological vulnerability to HIV infection. Girl and Boy children notice and internalize adult behaviours towards one another. How we behave towards each other within today's HIV pandemic  directly affects what they learn as they grow into their adulthood.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 1984)

Foreword for Real Stories Gallery (July 2010)

Twenty years ago, as we watched and willed each footstep Nelson Mandela placed away from the Victor-Verster Prison, we became reborn as a free nation. What we saw, said and felt on that day in February 1990, is imprinted in our spirit and has made us change our lives. It was the day we knew that our fight to dismantle racial apartheid had been won. It was a day for international celebration. Our friends around the world shared our joy, as together we stood up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. What a wonderful gift we created for our children and our grandchildren. We could look at them in the eye and proudly declare our legacy of freedom to them.

Today when I look back over the emerging years of our freedom in South Africa, I see a new nation. Sadly, though, I also see a menace that was not dispelled twenty years ago and lives in the shadows created by our silent acceptance. That menace is the scourge of HIV and AIDS, the scourge that today rushes through the bodies of our people, old and young. And everyday when we let our fears cast the shadow, we let the menace grow. Let us reach out to our brothers and sisters and not speak in hushed tones of shame; but instead let them know that we care. It is time for us to nurture kindness within our homes and to reach out for joy born of freedom and respect.

Today our international communities of storytellers are giving us the opportunity to come together and stand up for the principles of universal dignity and fellowship. I invite you all to join us, so we may harness the power of our humanity and our enormous capacity for creativity, to mobilize our imaginations and weave together through our stories, a vision that we shall reach for which will influence our thoughts and actions towards our kin.

God bless you

Rachel Chapple and David Koloane (Delfina Studios)

David Koloane, M.A. (Bag Factory, South Africa)

Foreword for Real Stories Gallery (June 2010)

More than twenty years ago artists from different cultural and racial backgrounds came together in the capital city of Botswana, Gaborone. They came from within South Africa and outside the country and other far flung metropolis. The occasion was the "Culture And Resistance Conference" in 1982, coordinated by the then banned African National Congress Medu Cultural Ensemble. 

The Rallying point of the event was the scourge of the apartheid system of government in South Africa at the time. One of the primary resolutions adopted at the conference was that artistic expression of any kind, should be employed as a weapon in the struggle against apartheid. Black and white artists stood shoulder to shoulder for the first time in the fight against racial discrimination. Apartheid legislation has since been annulled in the statute books. 

In celebrating the new dispensation in 1984 with the revered personality of Nelson Mandela at the helm, who could have predicted what lay beyond the horizon after the euphoria of the inauguration of the first democratically elected government in South Africa? A human catastrophe in the form of HIV and AIDS reared its' head decimating whole communities. 

The pandemic has been an eerie stigma of silence and shame from within ourselves, our neighbours, peers and societal deficiencies culminating in the gross vulnerability of women and children in our midst. The numerous funerals conducted on a daily basis in the South African townships also reflect the racial and economic divide still prevalent. It was at the funeral of an ex-student of mine where a colleague, who was a close friend of deceased, remarked to me: "Young people today are learning how to die and not how to live." The stories and legends are legion, yet they are only told in whispers and whimpers. 

Let us will ourselves against the pandemic with the same urgency and vigour of our fight against apartheid. If we had artists of the world against apartheid, why can't we have artists of the world against AIDS? 

Real Stories Gallery is calling for the international community of artists and creative writers to help slow down the rapid spread of HIV within our neighbourhoods around the world. We are invited to express our collective concerns, to share our wisdom and to cross fertilize our ideas. Through our stories we may shift the culture of discrimination towards those affected by the virus. 

Together our visual documents on Real Stories Gallery, our collective conscience and desire for social justice, will bring about change; a new culture created by ordinary people who share an ordinary vision - that it is possible today for everyone to have access to lifesaving HIV prevention and health care, to live with dignity and respect. 

As an artist who has experienced astonishing changes within the communities surrounding me, I urge you to reach out and look around you with the empathy and reflection of an artist, and return to share your work with us all on Real Stories Gallery.

"Sister AIDS" by Mary Scriver (Writer/ Poet/ Minister/ USA)

Thomasina is a nun.  She has AIDS.  It wasn’t sex or drugs because she was an old-fashioned nun who came into the order quite young and was quite content to be there.  But her order used to run a hospital and she was very good at blood draws.  That must have been it.  

There was a long space between whatever the incident was and the time when the symptoms started showing up.  In fact, the doctor had a hard time figuring out the diagnosis because it seemed so very unlikely.  She was one of the early female docs and proud of her diagnostic skills, so it became a big deal until finally the two women sat down with a legal pad, asked every question, and added them up.

Sister Thomasina was lucky because there were meds.  But by definition HIV-AIDS is not one disease, but rather the lack of an immune defense to all the things out there that live off human bodies.  There were many aggravations and occasionally a real emergency.

One one of those occasions Sister Thomasina was taken to the hospital where she had used to work.  The order was aging, costs were hard to contain, and the hospital had been sold to a corporation. 

The hospital refused to admit Sister Thomasina.  She had no insurance.  

The sisters, elderly as they were, had not lost all their fire.  They got on the phone to find care for the member of their community and succeeded.  Then it occurred to them that the whole town was their community.  That was the beginning of a campaign.  Thomasina changed her name to Sister AIDS.