Showing posts with label AIDS Orphans Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AIDS Orphans Africa. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Stolen Childhood
By EVE MASHOO
FIRST, AIDS TOOK HER PARents. Then it took her childhood. At 15, Alice Nabulya can’t remember when she lost her father and his two wives to the pandemic. But she knows all too well the harsh reality of her current life: each day, instead of coming home from primary school to the security, guidance and love of adults, she must try to provide those things to a sister and five brothers, the youngest of whom is just four years old.
She does the best she can, cultivating a small garden beside the ramshackle mud house where they live in Kiterede, Rugasa sub-county, Masaka district. She is barely getting by. She is small for her age, and her siblings, who never wear shoes to school, look dirty and unhappy. A piglet and chicken dart in and out of the house. Its roof, the rusty remains of iron sheeting, is falling off the walls, but there’s nothing Nabulya can do about that. She doesn’t even know who owns the house. The children sleep on grass laid across the floor.
A growing number of African children share a plight as desperate as Alice’s and what remains of her family. Today, 2.3 million Ugandan children have been orphaned by HIV and Aids, one of the highest figures in the world. It is not just a Ugandan problem: By 2010 there will be 15.7 million children orphaned by HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa. In Uganda, the problem has been aggravated by the 20-year old war in the north that has left over a million children orphaned.
The United Nations says the scourge has turned more than 11 million children worldwide into orphans; nine out of 10 of those are in Africa. The disease is also responsible for leaving over 18 million children around the world without one or both parents — eight out of 10 of those orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. With half of Uganda’s 32 million people aged below 18 years, the socio-economic impact of HIV and Aids orphans is frightening.
Nabulya and her family are not isolated cases. While Ugandans take pride in the strides they have made in the fight against HIV and Aids, and the country boasts a number of initiatives like the ABC (abstinence, being faithful and condom use) model, the number of orphans has continued to grow and now represents one of the country’s biggest problems. In part, the rising tide of orphans reflects the continuing effects of the Aids pandemic, which has left a generation of children in jeopardy.
The director general of the Uganda Aids Commission, Dr Kihumuro Apuuli, says the problem of orphans is immense. The commission is the government body in charge of co-ordinating the national response to the epidemic.
ABOUT ONE IN FOUR UGANDAN households have two or more orphans. The responsibility of raising these children is not easy and even providing them with basic necessities does not come that cheap. With the development of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) people living with HIV have managed to stay healthy longer, but not everyone can afford the life-prolonging drugs. According to some estimates, less than half of the 300,000 Ugandans in need of ARVs have regular access to them. Without a source of income, children are particularly vulnerable.
Many of these children have turned up in the streets of Kampala, to try and eke out a living by begging, doing menial jobs or stealing. The lucky few have been taken in by charities and foster families.
Yet these interventions are often just a drop in the ocean. The biggest and oldest orphanage, the Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans, which was started by First Lady Janet Museveni in 1986, only looks after 71,575 orphans and 14,315 households in several districts in the country.
A few church-based organisations are also getting involved. Esther Agwang, the spokeswoman for Watoto Childcare Ministries, which is affiliated to the Kampala Pentecostal Church, says they provide shelter, food and healthcare for 1,700 orphans.
But those without assistance of any kind are a disturbing majority.
Isabirye Hassan, a councillor in Kampala City Council, says the capital’s streets have been taken over by street children who engage in crimes like pickpocketing and prostitution. Once in a while the city council rounds up street children and takes them to Kampiringisa rehabilitation centre where they receive training and counselling. However, with a high unemployment rate in the country, many of them return to the streets soon after they are discharged.
Andrew Serwanga of a child-rights NGO says the government needs to develop and implement policies on addressing the problem of orphans and vulnerable children. Although a desk has been created in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, anecdotal evidence from the streets shows little, if any, impact.
Universal Primary Education, which the Ugandan government started 11 years ago, is meant to get more children off the streets and into classrooms. According to the Ministry of Education spokesman Aggrey Kibenge, UPE has raised enrolment from 2.5 million pupils in 1997 to 7.4 million today.
HOWEVER, A RECENT World Bank report noted very high dropout and truancy rates in the programme and questions remain about the quality of education offered in bloated classrooms, some of them run under trees, with poorly paid and trained teachers.
Some children drop out to get married early, while families count on the children as extra sources of labour on their farms. Others drop out to look after ailing parents or to head their homesteads after the death — often HIV and Aids-related — of parents and guardians.
The government says it is implementing a five-year national strategic programme for orphans and other vulnerable children to run until 2009/10 to identify cost-effective ways of improving their welfare.
Unfortunately, time is running out for this generation of children orphaned and left vulnerable by HIV and Aids.
Mary Nakku, who lives in Katanga, a Kampala slum notorious for its crime and grime, is 13 years old. She lost both parents to HIV and Aids in 2000. She is HIV and Aids positive but has no time for self-pity: She has to look after her five siblings who all live in a tiny one-bedroom shack in the middle of the slum.
Mary earns a few thousand shillings each month by operating a neighbour’s public pay phone. She also occasionally receives handouts from charity organisations but worries, with tears welling in her eyes, what would happen if she were to fall sick.
Heralded for reducing HIV prevalence from as high as 30 per cent in the early 1990s to about 6.5 per cent, the Ugandan government needs to do more fast for Nakku and the millions other orphans like her. With many turning to prostitution to survive, the epidemic just might come round full-circle.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
sub-Saharan Africa
AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: a looming threat to future generations
While the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been drawing increased media attention, one the most troubling aspects of it – the long-term impact on African societies of some 11 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa – has been featured less often.
There are more than 34 million orphans in the region today and some 11 million of them are orphaned by AIDS. Eight out of every 10 children in the world whose parents have died of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. During the last decade, the proportion of children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS rose from 3.5% to 32% and will continue to increase exponentially as the disease spreads unchecked. As a result, the disease is in effect making orphans of a whole generation of children, jeopardizing their health, their rights, their well-being and sometimes their very survival, not to mention the overall development prospects of their countries.
The AIDS epidemic contributes to deepening poverty in many communities, since the burden of caring for the vast majority of orphans falls on already overstretched extended families; women or grandparents with the most meagre resources. Such households are expected to earn 31% less than other households. Without a real safety net, street life is the recourse for many orphans, who often suffer from poor health, trauma and psychological distress, making them more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
The overall situation has reached alarming proportions also because women have moved from the periphery to the epicentre of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Averaging over 55% of all people living with HIV/AIDS, girls and women are disproportionately affected. Meanwhile, constraints on their access to education and treatment, coupled with their inability to find paid employment, are causing rural households often headed by women to slide further into poverty.
With AIDS-ravaged economies starting to crumble, urgent national strategies are needed to strengthen governmental, community and family capacities and to redouble international cooperation to reverse the tide of this global calamity. “We’re all struggling to find a viable response, and there are, of course, some superb projects and initiatives in all countries but we can’t seem to take them to scale,” says Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. “In the mean time, millions of children live traumatized, unstable lives, robbed not just of their parents, but of their childhoods and futures.”
What is often overlooked is the ripple effect the epidemic will have on future governance, social structures and growth of the worst hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Dramatically high mortality rates will result in the depletion of much of the labour force, both in urban and rural areas, with the losses having a profound impact on the very foundations of economies and state administration. Undoubtedly, sub-Saharan Africa is not alone in facing this challenge – several countries in Asia are beginning to feel the early impact of the “lost generation” of children orphaned and made vulnerable by AIDS. With the toll of AIDS orphans threatening to reach 25 million by the year 2010, this problem should remain at the centre of attention of all concerned – governments, the public and the media -- to stem the spread of this scourge.
While the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been drawing increased media attention, one the most troubling aspects of it – the long-term impact on African societies of some 11 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa – has been featured less often.
There are more than 34 million orphans in the region today and some 11 million of them are orphaned by AIDS. Eight out of every 10 children in the world whose parents have died of AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. During the last decade, the proportion of children who are orphaned as a result of AIDS rose from 3.5% to 32% and will continue to increase exponentially as the disease spreads unchecked. As a result, the disease is in effect making orphans of a whole generation of children, jeopardizing their health, their rights, their well-being and sometimes their very survival, not to mention the overall development prospects of their countries.
The AIDS epidemic contributes to deepening poverty in many communities, since the burden of caring for the vast majority of orphans falls on already overstretched extended families; women or grandparents with the most meagre resources. Such households are expected to earn 31% less than other households. Without a real safety net, street life is the recourse for many orphans, who often suffer from poor health, trauma and psychological distress, making them more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
The overall situation has reached alarming proportions also because women have moved from the periphery to the epicentre of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Averaging over 55% of all people living with HIV/AIDS, girls and women are disproportionately affected. Meanwhile, constraints on their access to education and treatment, coupled with their inability to find paid employment, are causing rural households often headed by women to slide further into poverty.
With AIDS-ravaged economies starting to crumble, urgent national strategies are needed to strengthen governmental, community and family capacities and to redouble international cooperation to reverse the tide of this global calamity. “We’re all struggling to find a viable response, and there are, of course, some superb projects and initiatives in all countries but we can’t seem to take them to scale,” says Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. “In the mean time, millions of children live traumatized, unstable lives, robbed not just of their parents, but of their childhoods and futures.”
What is often overlooked is the ripple effect the epidemic will have on future governance, social structures and growth of the worst hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Dramatically high mortality rates will result in the depletion of much of the labour force, both in urban and rural areas, with the losses having a profound impact on the very foundations of economies and state administration. Undoubtedly, sub-Saharan Africa is not alone in facing this challenge – several countries in Asia are beginning to feel the early impact of the “lost generation” of children orphaned and made vulnerable by AIDS. With the toll of AIDS orphans threatening to reach 25 million by the year 2010, this problem should remain at the centre of attention of all concerned – governments, the public and the media -- to stem the spread of this scourge.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
What Will Become of Africa’s AIDS Orphans? Part 2
Part 2
''Our little ones think they are going to America like the children in adoption programs,'' Atsede says. She is a small, dignified woman with delicate features and fine hair, who stands ramrod straight and offers a mild smile that trembles between civility and grief; she has seen much death. ''The older ones gradually understand: 'Because we have AIDS, we cannot go to America.''' In fact, though it is not explicitly U.S. policy to exclude H.I.V.-positive adopted children, and these children generally respond rapidly to the onset of medical treatment in America, the immigration paperwork is more complicated, and few families step forward for these youngsters. So the Enat children are not in line for adoption; nor are they receiving medical treatment. ''Medication to fight AIDS is not available,'' says Atsede's husband, Gezahegn, who has the dark, rumpled, bloodshot look of a man who has been up all night; he has wrestled AIDS for a dozen of these small lives already and has had every one of them pulled from his arms. In America last year, thanks to vigorous treatment of infected pregnant women, only 200 H.I.V./AIDS-infected children were born, down from 2,000 in 1994. Most of those babies will live fairly normal lives and survive to adulthood. In Africa, without medications to treat complicating infections, 75 percent of H.I.V.-positive babies will be dead by the age of 2, says Dr. Mark Kline, director of the International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Of the remaining 25 percent, he says, very few will reach age 11. Until recently, Enat served as a holding center for children prior to testing. It was not always clear at first whether the children were infected or not. ''We see nice kids, bright futures, then we must test them,'' Atsede says. ''Some get the news that they are negative; then we can refer them to the Children's Commission for assignment to a foreign adoption program. Some will be adopted to America; others, to different countries. But other children test positive. When they first come, we often cannot guess. You'd think it would be the baby of a sibling group who will test positive, but then the results come back and sometimes it is the middle child, so the older child and the baby are transferred out.'' Gezahegn's background was in business and government administration, not medicine; he was reluctant to enter this field. Now he finds it has swallowed his life. Nothing compares in importance with trying to sustain the lives of the ill children in his care. ''We can fight pneumonia and small infections in the children, but that is all,'' he says. ''We are running a hospice program. It is rather hard to see the children dying.'' Still, these stricken children must be counted among the relatively blessed of their generation; the care they receive is the best available. ''The children are happy here,'' Atsede says. ''We celebrate holidays; we give them birthdays; we invite their living relatives to visit them. They know that the children at orphanages with adoption programs are learning English and other languages, so we teach them English here, too, so they don't feel left out. The hotels invite them to swing and climb on their playgrounds. We want them to enjoy life. We want them to see something of life.''
Time for that is often short. ''A child begins by losing weight,'' Gezahegn says. ''Then she develops infections, stops eating, has diarrhea, pain in joints, pain in ears. It can take five months, three months, two months. A child does not talk about it, but she's kind of depressed. One day she is not playing on the playground; she just wants to sit and to be held.''
It has become the life mission of this couple to do more than sit by the deathbeds of small children in pain. They are not participants in the debate among health-care professionals over whether treatment or prevention ought to be the public health priority in Africa, Asia and South America. Their question is simpler: how can they get hold of the triple cocktails that in America now have reduced deaths by AIDS by 76 percent since 1996? By American standards, the cost doesn't sound extravagant. An average figure for pediatric triple-drug therapy in Africa is now $60 to $80 per child per month, and the price is dropping. But without serious commitment of financing from the industrialized world, even these modest costs are unreachable. When Atsede sits down on a chair in the dirt yard under a shade tree for a rare break, the children skitter over to her and lay their heads upon her long cotton skirts or climb up into her arms and nuzzle their faces into her neck. She laughs as her face is dotted with kisses. ''The children call me Abaye, Daddy, and her Emaye, Mommy,'' Gezahegn says. A little girl waits for him, eager to demonstrate for him a trick she has mastered at jump-rope. The music class waits for his attention to show that they have learned a song with synchronized dance steps. Children raise their hands and hop up and down to be chosen by Gezahegn to accompany him in the backfiring van on an errand to town. Until sickness comes, the faces under the bouncing braids of the little girls and the brimmed caps of the boys are round, happy and hopeful. ''Without therapy,'' Kline says, ''as far as we know, all of the children will die.''
Layla House, a shady compound with a paved common area, a baby house, dormitories for boys and for girls, a schoolroom and a kitchen and dining hall, is run by Adoption Advocates International, based in Port Angeles, Wash. A.F.A.A. House, on the outskirts of town, almost buried in flower gardens, is run by Americans for African Adoptions, based in Indianapolis and directed by Cheryl Carter-Shotts. These two are the only American agencies permitted by the Ethiopian government to arrange for adoption of healthy Ethiopian orphans to America. More than 100 children joined new families in the U.S. in 2001. At least a dozen other adoption agencies based in Addis Ababa represent Australia, Canada and seven nations of Western Europe and Scandinavia. It is the first recourse of everyone ethically involved with intercountry adoption to place orphans with relatives, with friends or with families within their home countries; no one imagines or pretends that adoption is a solution to a generation of children orphaned by disease. It is one very small and modest option, a case of families in industrialized nations throwing lifelines to individual children even as their governments fail to commit the money to turn back the epidemic. ''Consider the impact of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' on the world,'' says Mark Rosenberg. ''That was the journal of just one doomed child. Though we are looking at the deaths of millions, the saving of even one life is not trivial.''
In the dusty schoolroom at Layla House, students face forward on wood benches and chant lessons in high voices. It is a relief on this hot day to enter the cool, whitewashed room. The children's faces are soft and hopeful. Most are of elementary-school age, though a few perspiring teenagers tower over the rest with the same earnest, slightly anxious expressions. Their teacher, a young man who has never been to America though it is his fondest wish to go, writes American greetings on the chalkboard. ''How are you?'' he taps out, while pronouncing the words. ''How are you?'' the children repeat. ''I am fine,'' he dabs in chalk. ''I am fine,'' they call back in high voices. ''I am very well,'' he writes. ''I am very well,'' they sing. They roll their R's, giving a high-tone flourish to their ''verys.'' ''I am doing nicely.'' ''I am doing nicely.''
There is no preparation for bad news here, I notice. The working premise is that these children will be chosen by American families for adoption, and their airfare out of Ethiopia paid for by their waiting parents. From the vantage point of this ancient and poor country, this great opportunity would seem to leave no room for complaint and thus no need to prepare a vocabulary of grumbling.
''How are you this evening?'' ''How are you this evening?'' ''I am quite well, thank you.'' ''I am quite well, thank you.'' With the next lesson, the teacher offers many ways to express ''I don't know.'' ''I have no idea,'' the young man is calling over his shoulder. ''I have no I-dea,'' sing the sweet voices, rising up near the end of each phrase. ''I shouldn't think so.'' ''I shouldn't think so.'' ''I don't expect so.'' ''I don't expect so.'' ''Search me.'' ''Search me.'' ''I haven't a clue.'' ''I haven't a clue.'' Through the square uncovered windows, sunlight and dust motes stream onto the pebbly floor. The kids, wearing T-shirts, cutoffs and flip-flops, begin to fidget in expectation of lunchtime. The lessons in Americana do not cease at mealtime. At long wood tables, there are bowls of orange slices and carved-up bread. Though the children would welcome, at every meal, platters of injera used in lieu of silverware -- they are being taught to use American forks and spoons and to maneuver foods like spaghetti and meatballs. ''Please to pass the water,'' a boy booms. ''Thank you very much.'' ''Thank you very much,'' replies his friend, who has passed the pitcher. ''How are you this evening?'' ''I am very well,'' shouts the roly-poly boy. ''How are you this morning?'' ''I have no idea. Please how is your sister?'' ''I haven't a clue. Please to pass the meatball. Thank you very much.'' ''Thank you very much.'' Some of these kids once lived on the street, cried for food, tried to keep alive younger siblings and had few prospects of surviving to adulthood without their birth parents. They now enjoy fantasies that they will wear Walkmans and ride bicycles when they live in America. When asked by the adults in their lives, ''What do you want to be when you grow up?'' no one replies, ''I didn't actually realize I was going to grow up,'' though some must think it. Instead, these boys and girls have learned to reply ''doctor,'' ''teacher,'' ''scientist.'' ''I want to drive a car,'' says a 6-year-old girl named Bethlehem; whether professionally or at her leisure, she doesn't specify. ''I will be an actor!'' cries a boy, ''an actor like Jackie Chan.'' ''I want to ride motorcycles!'' shouts another boy. ''When I grow up, I want to help the elderly people,'' says a merry dimpled 13-year-old girl, Mekdes, cognizant, like many of the young teens, that she is on the receiving end of charity and eager, herself, to be of service. ''I wasn't at all sure what the response of American families would be to our opening an Ethiopian adoption program,'' says Merrily Ripley, director of Adoption Advocates International. Her agency places children from Haiti, China and Thailand with American adoptive families and assists with a program focusing on children orphaned in Sierra Leone. She flies to Ethiopia nearly every other month and occasionally indulges the little girls who beg to fix her long, straight gray hair. On this day, she looks like a cross between someone's hippie grandmother and Bo Derek in ''10,'' with skinny beaded braids dangling over her shoulders. ''Would we be able to find families for African children? Would we be able to manage a children's home half a world away? We never dreamed that Ethiopia would become our most popular program.'' While a couple of the older children have arrived with psychological challenges based on early loss of mother or other relative, the majority began their lives in families as breast-fed, tickled, treasured children. They are like kids in any backyard or school playground in America. Though a round-roofed straw hut in Gondar, Ethiopia, may seem impossibly different from a suburban home outside Cleveland or San Francisco, it is not. Children who have known the love of parents are eager to enjoy it again, and their adjustment to American family life has been rapid.
''Our little ones think they are going to America like the children in adoption programs,'' Atsede says. She is a small, dignified woman with delicate features and fine hair, who stands ramrod straight and offers a mild smile that trembles between civility and grief; she has seen much death. ''The older ones gradually understand: 'Because we have AIDS, we cannot go to America.''' In fact, though it is not explicitly U.S. policy to exclude H.I.V.-positive adopted children, and these children generally respond rapidly to the onset of medical treatment in America, the immigration paperwork is more complicated, and few families step forward for these youngsters. So the Enat children are not in line for adoption; nor are they receiving medical treatment. ''Medication to fight AIDS is not available,'' says Atsede's husband, Gezahegn, who has the dark, rumpled, bloodshot look of a man who has been up all night; he has wrestled AIDS for a dozen of these small lives already and has had every one of them pulled from his arms. In America last year, thanks to vigorous treatment of infected pregnant women, only 200 H.I.V./AIDS-infected children were born, down from 2,000 in 1994. Most of those babies will live fairly normal lives and survive to adulthood. In Africa, without medications to treat complicating infections, 75 percent of H.I.V.-positive babies will be dead by the age of 2, says Dr. Mark Kline, director of the International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Of the remaining 25 percent, he says, very few will reach age 11. Until recently, Enat served as a holding center for children prior to testing. It was not always clear at first whether the children were infected or not. ''We see nice kids, bright futures, then we must test them,'' Atsede says. ''Some get the news that they are negative; then we can refer them to the Children's Commission for assignment to a foreign adoption program. Some will be adopted to America; others, to different countries. But other children test positive. When they first come, we often cannot guess. You'd think it would be the baby of a sibling group who will test positive, but then the results come back and sometimes it is the middle child, so the older child and the baby are transferred out.'' Gezahegn's background was in business and government administration, not medicine; he was reluctant to enter this field. Now he finds it has swallowed his life. Nothing compares in importance with trying to sustain the lives of the ill children in his care. ''We can fight pneumonia and small infections in the children, but that is all,'' he says. ''We are running a hospice program. It is rather hard to see the children dying.'' Still, these stricken children must be counted among the relatively blessed of their generation; the care they receive is the best available. ''The children are happy here,'' Atsede says. ''We celebrate holidays; we give them birthdays; we invite their living relatives to visit them. They know that the children at orphanages with adoption programs are learning English and other languages, so we teach them English here, too, so they don't feel left out. The hotels invite them to swing and climb on their playgrounds. We want them to enjoy life. We want them to see something of life.''
Time for that is often short. ''A child begins by losing weight,'' Gezahegn says. ''Then she develops infections, stops eating, has diarrhea, pain in joints, pain in ears. It can take five months, three months, two months. A child does not talk about it, but she's kind of depressed. One day she is not playing on the playground; she just wants to sit and to be held.''
It has become the life mission of this couple to do more than sit by the deathbeds of small children in pain. They are not participants in the debate among health-care professionals over whether treatment or prevention ought to be the public health priority in Africa, Asia and South America. Their question is simpler: how can they get hold of the triple cocktails that in America now have reduced deaths by AIDS by 76 percent since 1996? By American standards, the cost doesn't sound extravagant. An average figure for pediatric triple-drug therapy in Africa is now $60 to $80 per child per month, and the price is dropping. But without serious commitment of financing from the industrialized world, even these modest costs are unreachable. When Atsede sits down on a chair in the dirt yard under a shade tree for a rare break, the children skitter over to her and lay their heads upon her long cotton skirts or climb up into her arms and nuzzle their faces into her neck. She laughs as her face is dotted with kisses. ''The children call me Abaye, Daddy, and her Emaye, Mommy,'' Gezahegn says. A little girl waits for him, eager to demonstrate for him a trick she has mastered at jump-rope. The music class waits for his attention to show that they have learned a song with synchronized dance steps. Children raise their hands and hop up and down to be chosen by Gezahegn to accompany him in the backfiring van on an errand to town. Until sickness comes, the faces under the bouncing braids of the little girls and the brimmed caps of the boys are round, happy and hopeful. ''Without therapy,'' Kline says, ''as far as we know, all of the children will die.''
Layla House, a shady compound with a paved common area, a baby house, dormitories for boys and for girls, a schoolroom and a kitchen and dining hall, is run by Adoption Advocates International, based in Port Angeles, Wash. A.F.A.A. House, on the outskirts of town, almost buried in flower gardens, is run by Americans for African Adoptions, based in Indianapolis and directed by Cheryl Carter-Shotts. These two are the only American agencies permitted by the Ethiopian government to arrange for adoption of healthy Ethiopian orphans to America. More than 100 children joined new families in the U.S. in 2001. At least a dozen other adoption agencies based in Addis Ababa represent Australia, Canada and seven nations of Western Europe and Scandinavia. It is the first recourse of everyone ethically involved with intercountry adoption to place orphans with relatives, with friends or with families within their home countries; no one imagines or pretends that adoption is a solution to a generation of children orphaned by disease. It is one very small and modest option, a case of families in industrialized nations throwing lifelines to individual children even as their governments fail to commit the money to turn back the epidemic. ''Consider the impact of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' on the world,'' says Mark Rosenberg. ''That was the journal of just one doomed child. Though we are looking at the deaths of millions, the saving of even one life is not trivial.''
In the dusty schoolroom at Layla House, students face forward on wood benches and chant lessons in high voices. It is a relief on this hot day to enter the cool, whitewashed room. The children's faces are soft and hopeful. Most are of elementary-school age, though a few perspiring teenagers tower over the rest with the same earnest, slightly anxious expressions. Their teacher, a young man who has never been to America though it is his fondest wish to go, writes American greetings on the chalkboard. ''How are you?'' he taps out, while pronouncing the words. ''How are you?'' the children repeat. ''I am fine,'' he dabs in chalk. ''I am fine,'' they call back in high voices. ''I am very well,'' he writes. ''I am very well,'' they sing. They roll their R's, giving a high-tone flourish to their ''verys.'' ''I am doing nicely.'' ''I am doing nicely.''
There is no preparation for bad news here, I notice. The working premise is that these children will be chosen by American families for adoption, and their airfare out of Ethiopia paid for by their waiting parents. From the vantage point of this ancient and poor country, this great opportunity would seem to leave no room for complaint and thus no need to prepare a vocabulary of grumbling.
''How are you this evening?'' ''How are you this evening?'' ''I am quite well, thank you.'' ''I am quite well, thank you.'' With the next lesson, the teacher offers many ways to express ''I don't know.'' ''I have no idea,'' the young man is calling over his shoulder. ''I have no I-dea,'' sing the sweet voices, rising up near the end of each phrase. ''I shouldn't think so.'' ''I shouldn't think so.'' ''I don't expect so.'' ''I don't expect so.'' ''Search me.'' ''Search me.'' ''I haven't a clue.'' ''I haven't a clue.'' Through the square uncovered windows, sunlight and dust motes stream onto the pebbly floor. The kids, wearing T-shirts, cutoffs and flip-flops, begin to fidget in expectation of lunchtime. The lessons in Americana do not cease at mealtime. At long wood tables, there are bowls of orange slices and carved-up bread. Though the children would welcome, at every meal, platters of injera used in lieu of silverware -- they are being taught to use American forks and spoons and to maneuver foods like spaghetti and meatballs. ''Please to pass the water,'' a boy booms. ''Thank you very much.'' ''Thank you very much,'' replies his friend, who has passed the pitcher. ''How are you this evening?'' ''I am very well,'' shouts the roly-poly boy. ''How are you this morning?'' ''I have no idea. Please how is your sister?'' ''I haven't a clue. Please to pass the meatball. Thank you very much.'' ''Thank you very much.'' Some of these kids once lived on the street, cried for food, tried to keep alive younger siblings and had few prospects of surviving to adulthood without their birth parents. They now enjoy fantasies that they will wear Walkmans and ride bicycles when they live in America. When asked by the adults in their lives, ''What do you want to be when you grow up?'' no one replies, ''I didn't actually realize I was going to grow up,'' though some must think it. Instead, these boys and girls have learned to reply ''doctor,'' ''teacher,'' ''scientist.'' ''I want to drive a car,'' says a 6-year-old girl named Bethlehem; whether professionally or at her leisure, she doesn't specify. ''I will be an actor!'' cries a boy, ''an actor like Jackie Chan.'' ''I want to ride motorcycles!'' shouts another boy. ''When I grow up, I want to help the elderly people,'' says a merry dimpled 13-year-old girl, Mekdes, cognizant, like many of the young teens, that she is on the receiving end of charity and eager, herself, to be of service. ''I wasn't at all sure what the response of American families would be to our opening an Ethiopian adoption program,'' says Merrily Ripley, director of Adoption Advocates International. Her agency places children from Haiti, China and Thailand with American adoptive families and assists with a program focusing on children orphaned in Sierra Leone. She flies to Ethiopia nearly every other month and occasionally indulges the little girls who beg to fix her long, straight gray hair. On this day, she looks like a cross between someone's hippie grandmother and Bo Derek in ''10,'' with skinny beaded braids dangling over her shoulders. ''Would we be able to find families for African children? Would we be able to manage a children's home half a world away? We never dreamed that Ethiopia would become our most popular program.'' While a couple of the older children have arrived with psychological challenges based on early loss of mother or other relative, the majority began their lives in families as breast-fed, tickled, treasured children. They are like kids in any backyard or school playground in America. Though a round-roofed straw hut in Gondar, Ethiopia, may seem impossibly different from a suburban home outside Cleveland or San Francisco, it is not. Children who have known the love of parents are eager to enjoy it again, and their adjustment to American family life has been rapid.
Friday, November 30, 2007
What Will Become of Africa’s AIDS Orphans? part 1
What Will Become of Africa’s AIDS Orphans? part 1
New York Times Magazine
December 22, 2002
Four years ago, a fifth grader in my children's elementary school in Atlanta lost his father in a twin-engine private plane crash. The terrible news whipped through the community; hundreds attended the funeral. Even today, there is a wisp of tragedy about the tall, blond high-school freshman -- fatherless, at so young an age. I find myself thinking about him when surveying the playground of one of the countless hole-in-the-wall orphanages of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Behind corrugated iron walls off a dirt road, schoolgirls in donated clothing are throwing pebbles and waggling their long legs out behind them in hopscotch. Other girls sit on kitchen chairs in the shade of a cement wall, braiding and rebraiding one another's hair. They weave in plastic beads in arrangements so tight that the completed hairdo looks like an abacus. Boys lope back and forth with a half-deflated soccer ball.
Virtually all of these children have lost both parents, most to AIDS. Malaria, yellow fever and especially TB are fatal illnesses here, too. ..:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />..:namespace prefix = w ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" />The children's grandparents have also died or are too poor and sick to care for the children; the same is true of their aunts and uncles, their neighbors and teachers. But no single one of these children has been isolated by tragedy: being orphaned is one of the common experiences of their generation. Ethiopia has one of the world's largest populations infected with H.I.V. and AIDS. The number of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia is estimated at a million, most of whom end up living on the streets.
But in a hierarchy among orphans, those here at Layla House are the most fortunate. They are H.I.V. negative and healthy, and they have landed in one of two excellent American adoption programs in this city, both generating high interest among prospective adoptive parents in the United States. But they have been plucked out of immeasurable tragedy.
''This is the most devastating pandemic to sweep the earth for many centuries,'' says Dr. Mark Rosenberg, executive director of the Atlanta-based Task Force for Child Survival and Development. He compares the moral imperative to stop the epidemic in Africa, Asia and South America to the era of the Holocaust and imagines that future generations will ask, ''What did you do to help?''
When I visit one on one with some of the children in a cool cinder-block storeroom, I discover that each is more like the fatherless Atlanta boy than not. As a group, the children generate a carefree mood of ruckus and play, but their secret grief coexists with the brave frolicking. Being orphaned may be typical for their peer group, but it pierces each child in a uniquely tragic way. The boys and girls remember and long for their prior lives, their deceased families, their homes -- whether middle-class house or rural hut -- and their childhoods that once were normal.
Yemisrach is a big-boned, innocent-faced 15- or 16-year-old. ''I live with my parents until age 9,'' she says. ''We are two girls, two boys. First Mother died; then Father died of malaria. I become like a mother to the others.''
Though they try to hold onto their memories, it is possible that the children don't have all of their facts straight. But no one is left to correct them, and the child becomes the family historian.
''My father drink too much, and he fall on the gate, and he get a stone on his head, and he went to the hospital and died,'' says sweet, worried-looking Yirgalem, whose forehead is too creased for his young age. ''After that, he buried.''
Robel is a rambunctious 8-year-old of the half-baked-schoolwork type. It is easy to picture him as a bike-riding, Nintendo-loving American boy. He has surmised that hospital treatment killed his mother. ''I was born in Tigray,'' he says, speaking through a translator like most of the younger kids. ''Then went with my parents to Sudan as refugees. My father would get food from the refugee camp and bring it to the house. Mother died in Sudan. She went to hospital for injection. First injection is good; second time, she is tired; third injection, she died. Then I hear people crying about father. They said, 'Your father has died.'
''My small sister, Gelila, is 4. When Gelila see something in my hand, she cry, so I give her. She does not remember our parents.''
There is a terrible sameness to the stories. They all head down the same path: the mother's death, then the father's; or Father died, then Mother, then Small Sister, then funny Baby Brother. Alone, bringing out the words of the family's end, a child's eyes fill with tears; the chest fills with sobs. Bedtime is the worst, when all shenanigans die down. At night, ghosts and visions and bad dreams visit the children. Through the open windows, you can hear kids crying into their pillows.
The orphans are not confined to the cities. In small farming towns hundreds of miles outside of Addis Ababa, children rush cars, offering flip-flops, bars of soap, packages of tissue or tree branches heavy with nuts. Those with nothing to sell offer labor: they will wash your windshield or watch your car for you if you park it. Some of these children are, at very young ages, the sole wage earner for their families. Orphaned in the countryside, they have migrated to the villages and towns where they have become squatters, trying to feed themselves and their younger siblings in alley dwellings improvised from scrap lumber or cloth or plastic. ''Almost without exception, children orphaned by AIDS are marginalized, stigmatized, malnourished, uneducated and psychologically damaged,'' Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, said last month in Namibia. ''They are affected by actions over which they have no control and in which they had no part. They deal with the most trauma, face the most dangerous threats and have the least protections. And because of all this, they, too, are very likely to become H.I.V. positive.'' She warned that the growing numbers of AIDS orphans means that the world will see ''an explosion in the number of child prostitutes, children living on the streets and child domestic workers.'' Eight-year-old Mekdalawit, from Dire Dawa, living in Layla House, remembers the days of her parents' deaths: ''My sister Biruktawit is a baby lying on the floor with her feet in the air -- like this. Our older sister throw herself in front of the car and scream and yell that she wants to die if our father is dead. Then our mother becomes so ill that she cannot move from her bed. She cannot eat, and she has sores all over her body, and she loves for us to gently scratch her skin.'' Mekdalawit and Biruktawit's eight older siblings tried to raise them, but they were obliged to leave home each day for school and for jobs. Worried that the youngest two would wander away from the family hut and be lost, the older children warned that monsters would catch and eat little girls if they didn't stay inside. Finally a few of the oldest brought the youngest two to the local authorities, who referred them to the Children, Youth and Family Affairs Department, known as the Children's Commission. It placed them in Layla House. The older sisters tearfully promised to visit, but their village is far from the capital.
Enat House in Addis Ababa, not far from Layla House, is run by a husband and wife, Gezahegn Wolde Yohannes and Atsedeweyen Abraham. The children who live here are all H.I.V. positive, the smallest victims of the continent's collision with H.I.V./AIDS: not only have they lost their mothers and fathers and siblings, but they themselves are sick. Some of them have begun to lose their hair; others are frighteningly thin; others have facial sores; and all but the babies and toddlers know precisely, in grim detail, what that means. At Enat, the first clue that the health of another child has taken a downward turn is the child's refusal to enter into the games and exercises she enjoyed last week. A child sitting listlessly on the curb at this playground is an awful omen. The day I visit Enat (an Amharic word for ''mother''), the directors and the teachers are mourning the death of a 6-year-old boy a few days earlier. But on the dirt playground, shaded by eucalyptus trees, the little girls weave one another's hair, and the children are awaiting a visit from their beloved guitar-playing P.E. teacher. The homey sour smell of injera -- the national bread, a spongy sourdough flat pancake -- rises from an outdoor brick kitchen. Later, in a sunny, freshly mopped dining hall, the children seat themselves at long tables for an art class. A glass vase of cut flowers sparkles with clean water on a tabletop. The children from rural areas never have seen scissors before, and their fingers wiggle with eagerness when the teacher begins handing out brightly colored plastic scissors. Yes, there are enough -- Christ Lutheran Church of Forest Hills, Pa., sent plenty in their boxes of donations. Following instructions, the children generate a blizzard of paper scraps in their first attempts to form snowflakes. (They have never seen snowflakes either). Stocky little Bettye is a pint-size Ethel Merman with a husky belly laugh and a booming voice. She pokes her tongue out the corner of her mouth as she scissors, in classic kindergarten style. The children hold up their lopsided constructions for one another to see, and they hoot in surprise.
The teacher, a slim woman in a long brown dress and head scarf, murmurs words of praise and often bends to stroke a child on the cheek, a gesture of calming affection. Later, I watch a music class, which consists of much hands-on-hip swaying and jumping under the guidance of the guitar-playing young P.E. teacher. Bettye belts out the words of the songs and jerks her fat little tush around. Eyob is a handsome, endearing boy in baggy brown pants and loafers, who slightly stalls his hand claps and foot-stomps till the last moment of each beat; I think he is inventing swing. But Eyob's hair is coming out in tufts. So is Bettye's. And there are no older children at this house; there are no older H.I.V.-positive children at all.
New York Times Magazine
December 22, 2002
Four years ago, a fifth grader in my children's elementary school in Atlanta lost his father in a twin-engine private plane crash. The terrible news whipped through the community; hundreds attended the funeral. Even today, there is a wisp of tragedy about the tall, blond high-school freshman -- fatherless, at so young an age. I find myself thinking about him when surveying the playground of one of the countless hole-in-the-wall orphanages of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Behind corrugated iron walls off a dirt road, schoolgirls in donated clothing are throwing pebbles and waggling their long legs out behind them in hopscotch. Other girls sit on kitchen chairs in the shade of a cement wall, braiding and rebraiding one another's hair. They weave in plastic beads in arrangements so tight that the completed hairdo looks like an abacus. Boys lope back and forth with a half-deflated soccer ball.
Virtually all of these children have lost both parents, most to AIDS. Malaria, yellow fever and especially TB are fatal illnesses here, too. ..:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />..:namespace prefix = w ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" />The children's grandparents have also died or are too poor and sick to care for the children; the same is true of their aunts and uncles, their neighbors and teachers. But no single one of these children has been isolated by tragedy: being orphaned is one of the common experiences of their generation. Ethiopia has one of the world's largest populations infected with H.I.V. and AIDS. The number of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia is estimated at a million, most of whom end up living on the streets.
But in a hierarchy among orphans, those here at Layla House are the most fortunate. They are H.I.V. negative and healthy, and they have landed in one of two excellent American adoption programs in this city, both generating high interest among prospective adoptive parents in the United States. But they have been plucked out of immeasurable tragedy.
''This is the most devastating pandemic to sweep the earth for many centuries,'' says Dr. Mark Rosenberg, executive director of the Atlanta-based Task Force for Child Survival and Development. He compares the moral imperative to stop the epidemic in Africa, Asia and South America to the era of the Holocaust and imagines that future generations will ask, ''What did you do to help?''
When I visit one on one with some of the children in a cool cinder-block storeroom, I discover that each is more like the fatherless Atlanta boy than not. As a group, the children generate a carefree mood of ruckus and play, but their secret grief coexists with the brave frolicking. Being orphaned may be typical for their peer group, but it pierces each child in a uniquely tragic way. The boys and girls remember and long for their prior lives, their deceased families, their homes -- whether middle-class house or rural hut -- and their childhoods that once were normal.
Yemisrach is a big-boned, innocent-faced 15- or 16-year-old. ''I live with my parents until age 9,'' she says. ''We are two girls, two boys. First Mother died; then Father died of malaria. I become like a mother to the others.''
Though they try to hold onto their memories, it is possible that the children don't have all of their facts straight. But no one is left to correct them, and the child becomes the family historian.
''My father drink too much, and he fall on the gate, and he get a stone on his head, and he went to the hospital and died,'' says sweet, worried-looking Yirgalem, whose forehead is too creased for his young age. ''After that, he buried.''
Robel is a rambunctious 8-year-old of the half-baked-schoolwork type. It is easy to picture him as a bike-riding, Nintendo-loving American boy. He has surmised that hospital treatment killed his mother. ''I was born in Tigray,'' he says, speaking through a translator like most of the younger kids. ''Then went with my parents to Sudan as refugees. My father would get food from the refugee camp and bring it to the house. Mother died in Sudan. She went to hospital for injection. First injection is good; second time, she is tired; third injection, she died. Then I hear people crying about father. They said, 'Your father has died.'
''My small sister, Gelila, is 4. When Gelila see something in my hand, she cry, so I give her. She does not remember our parents.''
There is a terrible sameness to the stories. They all head down the same path: the mother's death, then the father's; or Father died, then Mother, then Small Sister, then funny Baby Brother. Alone, bringing out the words of the family's end, a child's eyes fill with tears; the chest fills with sobs. Bedtime is the worst, when all shenanigans die down. At night, ghosts and visions and bad dreams visit the children. Through the open windows, you can hear kids crying into their pillows.
The orphans are not confined to the cities. In small farming towns hundreds of miles outside of Addis Ababa, children rush cars, offering flip-flops, bars of soap, packages of tissue or tree branches heavy with nuts. Those with nothing to sell offer labor: they will wash your windshield or watch your car for you if you park it. Some of these children are, at very young ages, the sole wage earner for their families. Orphaned in the countryside, they have migrated to the villages and towns where they have become squatters, trying to feed themselves and their younger siblings in alley dwellings improvised from scrap lumber or cloth or plastic. ''Almost without exception, children orphaned by AIDS are marginalized, stigmatized, malnourished, uneducated and psychologically damaged,'' Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, said last month in Namibia. ''They are affected by actions over which they have no control and in which they had no part. They deal with the most trauma, face the most dangerous threats and have the least protections. And because of all this, they, too, are very likely to become H.I.V. positive.'' She warned that the growing numbers of AIDS orphans means that the world will see ''an explosion in the number of child prostitutes, children living on the streets and child domestic workers.'' Eight-year-old Mekdalawit, from Dire Dawa, living in Layla House, remembers the days of her parents' deaths: ''My sister Biruktawit is a baby lying on the floor with her feet in the air -- like this. Our older sister throw herself in front of the car and scream and yell that she wants to die if our father is dead. Then our mother becomes so ill that she cannot move from her bed. She cannot eat, and she has sores all over her body, and she loves for us to gently scratch her skin.'' Mekdalawit and Biruktawit's eight older siblings tried to raise them, but they were obliged to leave home each day for school and for jobs. Worried that the youngest two would wander away from the family hut and be lost, the older children warned that monsters would catch and eat little girls if they didn't stay inside. Finally a few of the oldest brought the youngest two to the local authorities, who referred them to the Children, Youth and Family Affairs Department, known as the Children's Commission. It placed them in Layla House. The older sisters tearfully promised to visit, but their village is far from the capital.
Enat House in Addis Ababa, not far from Layla House, is run by a husband and wife, Gezahegn Wolde Yohannes and Atsedeweyen Abraham. The children who live here are all H.I.V. positive, the smallest victims of the continent's collision with H.I.V./AIDS: not only have they lost their mothers and fathers and siblings, but they themselves are sick. Some of them have begun to lose their hair; others are frighteningly thin; others have facial sores; and all but the babies and toddlers know precisely, in grim detail, what that means. At Enat, the first clue that the health of another child has taken a downward turn is the child's refusal to enter into the games and exercises she enjoyed last week. A child sitting listlessly on the curb at this playground is an awful omen. The day I visit Enat (an Amharic word for ''mother''), the directors and the teachers are mourning the death of a 6-year-old boy a few days earlier. But on the dirt playground, shaded by eucalyptus trees, the little girls weave one another's hair, and the children are awaiting a visit from their beloved guitar-playing P.E. teacher. The homey sour smell of injera -- the national bread, a spongy sourdough flat pancake -- rises from an outdoor brick kitchen. Later, in a sunny, freshly mopped dining hall, the children seat themselves at long tables for an art class. A glass vase of cut flowers sparkles with clean water on a tabletop. The children from rural areas never have seen scissors before, and their fingers wiggle with eagerness when the teacher begins handing out brightly colored plastic scissors. Yes, there are enough -- Christ Lutheran Church of Forest Hills, Pa., sent plenty in their boxes of donations. Following instructions, the children generate a blizzard of paper scraps in their first attempts to form snowflakes. (They have never seen snowflakes either). Stocky little Bettye is a pint-size Ethel Merman with a husky belly laugh and a booming voice. She pokes her tongue out the corner of her mouth as she scissors, in classic kindergarten style. The children hold up their lopsided constructions for one another to see, and they hoot in surprise.
The teacher, a slim woman in a long brown dress and head scarf, murmurs words of praise and often bends to stroke a child on the cheek, a gesture of calming affection. Later, I watch a music class, which consists of much hands-on-hip swaying and jumping under the guidance of the guitar-playing young P.E. teacher. Bettye belts out the words of the songs and jerks her fat little tush around. Eyob is a handsome, endearing boy in baggy brown pants and loafers, who slightly stalls his hand claps and foot-stomps till the last moment of each beat; I think he is inventing swing. But Eyob's hair is coming out in tufts. So is Bettye's. And there are no older children at this house; there are no older H.I.V.-positive children at all.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Keep A Child Alive
Keep a Child Alive
http://www.keepachildalive.org/
KEEP A CHILD ALIVE is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With more than 28 million dead and 15 million orphaned, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic family devastation. We provide life-saving medication, support, and orphan care, to keep these children and families alive. Keep a Child Alive gives 100%* of public donations to our cause.
KEEP A CHILD ALIVE is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With 28 million already dead, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic devastation in the family structure.
TREATMENT: Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment has transformed the lives of people with AIDS in the West, returning them from sickness to health. But less than 5% of children with AIDS have access to these life-saving drugs. When you sign up to become a monthly, or "Life" donor, 100%* of your monthly donation goes directly to life-saving AIDS drugs and surrounding care.
CARE: Keep a Child Alive provides medical services needed to make treatment possible. Doctors, nutrition, testing, transportation, and treatment for opportunistic infections are all necessary for anti-retroviral treatment to be successful. When necessary, KCA also provides nutrition for its patients.
ORPHANS: Currently 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and by 2010 the number is expected to reach 25 million. These children will face enormous risks in their struggle to stay alive. Keep a Child Alive builds and sustains orphanages to keep the most vulnerable children out of harm's way. Orphanages are a last resort, but necessary when children have no extended family to turn to for support.
* Less a 3% credit card fee
http://www.keepachildalive.org/
KEEP A CHILD ALIVE is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With more than 28 million dead and 15 million orphaned, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic family devastation. We provide life-saving medication, support, and orphan care, to keep these children and families alive. Keep a Child Alive gives 100%* of public donations to our cause.
KEEP A CHILD ALIVE is an urgent response to the AIDS pandemic ravaging Africa. With 28 million already dead, the disease continues, wiping out whole societies, threatening economic infrastructure and creating tragic devastation in the family structure.
TREATMENT: Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment has transformed the lives of people with AIDS in the West, returning them from sickness to health. But less than 5% of children with AIDS have access to these life-saving drugs. When you sign up to become a monthly, or "Life" donor, 100%* of your monthly donation goes directly to life-saving AIDS drugs and surrounding care.
CARE: Keep a Child Alive provides medical services needed to make treatment possible. Doctors, nutrition, testing, transportation, and treatment for opportunistic infections are all necessary for anti-retroviral treatment to be successful. When necessary, KCA also provides nutrition for its patients.
ORPHANS: Currently 15 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and by 2010 the number is expected to reach 25 million. These children will face enormous risks in their struggle to stay alive. Keep a Child Alive builds and sustains orphanages to keep the most vulnerable children out of harm's way. Orphanages are a last resort, but necessary when children have no extended family to turn to for support.
* Less a 3% credit card fee
Monday, November 26, 2007
Africa: A Continent of Orphans
AFRICA: A Continent of Orphans
By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Dec 13 (IPS) - War, AIDS, malaria, cholera and famine have gradually turned Africa into a continent full of orphaned children and teenagers. According to the latest statistics released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), there are 48.3 million orphans south of the Sahara desert, one-quarter of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of orphans in Africa rose from 30.9 million to 41.5 million, and those orphaned by AIDS increased from 330,000 to seven million. Projections by the two U.N. agencies suggest that by 2010, there will be 53.1 million children under 18 bereft of their parents, 15.7 million of whom will have had parents who died of AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In response to these stark figures, Portuguese authorities have indicated that their country maintains strong historic links with Africa, and Interior Minister Antonio Santos da Costa has called on the Portuguese Refugee Council (CPR) to create a reception centre exclusively for African children arriving in Portugal unaccompanied by an adult. The minister's challenge was immediately taken up by CPR's chairwoman, Maria Teresa Tito de Morais, in spite of the fact that because of a lack of funds, "few unaccompanied children have arrived in Portugal" so far, as she explained to IPS. The spine-chilling statistics on African orphans estimate that there are 170,000 orphaned children in Mauritania, 710,000 in Mali, 800,000 in Niger, 600,000 in Chad, 1.7 million in Sudan, 280,000 in Eritrea, 48,000 in Djibouti, 4.8 million in Ethiopia, 630,000 in Somalia, 560,000 in Senegal, 710,000 in Burkina Faso, 370,000 in Benin, 64,000 in The Gambia, 100,000 in Guinea-Bissau and 370,000 in Guinea. Nigeria has 8.6 million orphans, Ivory Coast 1.4 million, Liberia 250,000, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic 340,000 each, Ghana and Cameroon one million each, Equatorial Guinea 29,000, Gabon 65,000, the Republic of the Congo 270,000, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) 4.2 million, Rwanda 820,000 and Burundi 600,000. Uganda and Kenya are home to 2.3 million orphans each, Tanzania to 2.4 million, Angola and Zambia 1.2 million each, the Comoros 33,000, Malawi 950,000, Namibia 140,000, Botwsana 150,000, Zimbabwe 1.4 million, Mozambique 1.5 million, Madagascar 900,000, Lesotho 150,000, and Swaziland and South Africa 2.5 million each. The reception centre to be established in northern Portugal will "take in orphan children who are still in foreign countries, even their home countries, waiting for fate to give direction to their lives. This will be a means of preventing them from becoming child soldiers, for instance," said Tito de Morais. To date, despite its special relationship with several African countries that were former Portuguese colonies, "Portugal has not had a strong tradition of receiving unaccompanied children," she said. "In 2006 we have only taken in 10, but since the government expressed an openness to welcome African orphans, we immediately went to work so that in two years time, or two and a half, the reception centre should be ready," she added. In the initial stage "we will be able to receive 40 children, divided into four groups: newborns to three-year-olds, and ages four to six, seven to 10, and 10 to 12," she described. Meanwhile, "at our current refugee centre we have set aside room especially for children, and we are already in communication with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) about identifying children in need of international protection, who may arrive before the new centre is ready," she added. On another front, "we will contact several mayors in the north of the country in January, because the cooperation and commitment of the municipalities is essential, as securing the land for building the centre is the first step toward making this cooperation possible," said Tito de Morais. During the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, which were contemporary with the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, Portugal took in orphans, particularly from Bosnia. At that time, a survey was carried out among couples potentially interested in adopting children. The poll found that the vast majority of respondents would prefer to adopt an African child from a former Portuguese colony, rather than one from the former Yugoslavia. The reasons given were the shared historical, linguistic and cultural identity with Angolans and Mozambicans. This result, a contrast with majority attitudes in the rest of Europe, according to Tito de Morais shows that "Portuguese people have a special sensitivity for welcoming vulnerable children, whatever their race or nationality, and in our experience, African children have never been excluded." Portugal's relationship with Africa, while often traumatic, has been a fundamental factor in the last six centuries of its history. Portugal, a pioneer in colonialism in Africa, founded its first colony there in 1415, and was virtually the last European power to leave the continent, in 1975. To this day, the cloud of what some historians and analysts call "the debt of colonialism" continues to hang over Portugal as a kind of collective "post-imperial guilt complex." Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) took a more benevolent attitude towards Portugal's colonial history in his book, whose title translates as "The World Created by the Portuguese" (1940), in which he concluded that Portugal's openness towards Africa, Brazil and its former colonies in Asia was due to the multicultural and multirracial nature of Portuguese society over many centuries. As a result, Portugal today "is the most diverse country in Europe, and travelling in its former African colonies one finds that there are white Africans, and in this country, that there are black Portuguese," Silvio Manuel de Paula, an Angolan-born pilot who holds dual Portuguese and Angolan nationality, told IPS. "That alone suffices to explain Portuguese openness to welcoming and adopting African orphans," de Paula said.
By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Dec 13 (IPS) - War, AIDS, malaria, cholera and famine have gradually turned Africa into a continent full of orphaned children and teenagers. According to the latest statistics released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), there are 48.3 million orphans south of the Sahara desert, one-quarter of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of orphans in Africa rose from 30.9 million to 41.5 million, and those orphaned by AIDS increased from 330,000 to seven million. Projections by the two U.N. agencies suggest that by 2010, there will be 53.1 million children under 18 bereft of their parents, 15.7 million of whom will have had parents who died of AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In response to these stark figures, Portuguese authorities have indicated that their country maintains strong historic links with Africa, and Interior Minister Antonio Santos da Costa has called on the Portuguese Refugee Council (CPR) to create a reception centre exclusively for African children arriving in Portugal unaccompanied by an adult. The minister's challenge was immediately taken up by CPR's chairwoman, Maria Teresa Tito de Morais, in spite of the fact that because of a lack of funds, "few unaccompanied children have arrived in Portugal" so far, as she explained to IPS. The spine-chilling statistics on African orphans estimate that there are 170,000 orphaned children in Mauritania, 710,000 in Mali, 800,000 in Niger, 600,000 in Chad, 1.7 million in Sudan, 280,000 in Eritrea, 48,000 in Djibouti, 4.8 million in Ethiopia, 630,000 in Somalia, 560,000 in Senegal, 710,000 in Burkina Faso, 370,000 in Benin, 64,000 in The Gambia, 100,000 in Guinea-Bissau and 370,000 in Guinea. Nigeria has 8.6 million orphans, Ivory Coast 1.4 million, Liberia 250,000, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic 340,000 each, Ghana and Cameroon one million each, Equatorial Guinea 29,000, Gabon 65,000, the Republic of the Congo 270,000, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) 4.2 million, Rwanda 820,000 and Burundi 600,000. Uganda and Kenya are home to 2.3 million orphans each, Tanzania to 2.4 million, Angola and Zambia 1.2 million each, the Comoros 33,000, Malawi 950,000, Namibia 140,000, Botwsana 150,000, Zimbabwe 1.4 million, Mozambique 1.5 million, Madagascar 900,000, Lesotho 150,000, and Swaziland and South Africa 2.5 million each. The reception centre to be established in northern Portugal will "take in orphan children who are still in foreign countries, even their home countries, waiting for fate to give direction to their lives. This will be a means of preventing them from becoming child soldiers, for instance," said Tito de Morais. To date, despite its special relationship with several African countries that were former Portuguese colonies, "Portugal has not had a strong tradition of receiving unaccompanied children," she said. "In 2006 we have only taken in 10, but since the government expressed an openness to welcome African orphans, we immediately went to work so that in two years time, or two and a half, the reception centre should be ready," she added. In the initial stage "we will be able to receive 40 children, divided into four groups: newborns to three-year-olds, and ages four to six, seven to 10, and 10 to 12," she described. Meanwhile, "at our current refugee centre we have set aside room especially for children, and we are already in communication with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) about identifying children in need of international protection, who may arrive before the new centre is ready," she added. On another front, "we will contact several mayors in the north of the country in January, because the cooperation and commitment of the municipalities is essential, as securing the land for building the centre is the first step toward making this cooperation possible," said Tito de Morais. During the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, which were contemporary with the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, Portugal took in orphans, particularly from Bosnia. At that time, a survey was carried out among couples potentially interested in adopting children. The poll found that the vast majority of respondents would prefer to adopt an African child from a former Portuguese colony, rather than one from the former Yugoslavia. The reasons given were the shared historical, linguistic and cultural identity with Angolans and Mozambicans. This result, a contrast with majority attitudes in the rest of Europe, according to Tito de Morais shows that "Portuguese people have a special sensitivity for welcoming vulnerable children, whatever their race or nationality, and in our experience, African children have never been excluded." Portugal's relationship with Africa, while often traumatic, has been a fundamental factor in the last six centuries of its history. Portugal, a pioneer in colonialism in Africa, founded its first colony there in 1415, and was virtually the last European power to leave the continent, in 1975. To this day, the cloud of what some historians and analysts call "the debt of colonialism" continues to hang over Portugal as a kind of collective "post-imperial guilt complex." Brazilian writer Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987) took a more benevolent attitude towards Portugal's colonial history in his book, whose title translates as "The World Created by the Portuguese" (1940), in which he concluded that Portugal's openness towards Africa, Brazil and its former colonies in Asia was due to the multicultural and multirracial nature of Portuguese society over many centuries. As a result, Portugal today "is the most diverse country in Europe, and travelling in its former African colonies one finds that there are white Africans, and in this country, that there are black Portuguese," Silvio Manuel de Paula, an Angolan-born pilot who holds dual Portuguese and Angolan nationality, told IPS. "That alone suffices to explain Portuguese openness to welcoming and adopting African orphans," de Paula said.
AIDS Orphans
Because of disease, poverty and hunger, children around the world are suffering. They face unimaginable daily living conditions, alone and without hope of a better future. Many will die before reaching adulthood.
One of the most devastating challenges for suffering children is the impact of HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Fifteen million children have been orphaned by AIDS, a number that is expected to increase to 40 million by 2010. Every 14 seconds, a child is orphaned by AIDS in Africa.
Can you help?
One of the most devastating challenges for suffering children is the impact of HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Fifteen million children have been orphaned by AIDS, a number that is expected to increase to 40 million by 2010. Every 14 seconds, a child is orphaned by AIDS in Africa.
Can you help?
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