Your daily Selection of IRIN Africa PlusNews reports, 11/18/2006

[Guest guest]

U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) -

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - SOUTH AFRICA: Life, love and HIV

1 - SOUTH AFRICA: Life, love and HIV

JOHANNESBURG, 18 November (PLUSNEWS) - " And life goes on ... " concludes the

preface to 'Conversations, HIV and the Family', a publication that aims to place

HIV/AIDS where it belongs - in the midst of real life itself, with all its

nuances and grit.

By documenting the personal accounts of families intimately affected by

HIV/AIDS, Conversations, a project of South Africa's Centre for AIDS

Development, Research and Evaluation (CADRE), cuts through the layers of

science, politics and ideology that effectively distance the epidemic from real

people and inadvertently perpetuate stigma.

Some of the 12 families featured took part in a lively launch of the project at

the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto,

recently. Although still faced with daunting challenges, a couple of those

profiled spoke of how their lives had been paradoxically enriched by their

journeys with HIV and AIDS.

Valencia Mofokeng, who together with her large blended family runs an AIDS

organisation in Orange Farm, said the project had given her a much-needed

platform to communicate with others in similar situations: " We people with

HIV/AIDS don't have a place to express our feelings. We can talk to our

counselors but we need to share our feelings with others too. "

" I'm a mother of orphans, " said Seipati Mtsi, also featured in Conversations.

" I'm their mother and they trust me. They put their life in me. Now I know a lot

about HIV/AIDS. I was scared to touch someone. Now I can kiss, share a plate,

live with people with HIV/AIDS. Thank God for giving me that strength. "

The family portraits, by photographer Giséle Wulfsohn, who has documented

HIV/AIDS in South Africa for almost 20 years, show the intimacy of every day

family life. These are accompanied by personal testimonies of individuals and

family members who describe how their lives have been stretched and altered by

HIV and AIDS.

The families are typical in their many variations - nuclear, single parent,

extended, homosexual; and their stories document the gamut of human experience.

Selinah Mashinini, a single HIV-positive mother who lives with her sister and

children in andra township; Christo Greyling, an HIV-positive Dutch Reformed

minister who left the church to form an AIDS ministry and went on to marry and

have two children after discovering his status; Naboe Abrahams, pregnant and

widowed at the age of 15, who has since married again and had more children with

a man who still refuses to test.

Sadly, one of those featured in the project, Busse, who chose close

friends and his goddaughter for his " family portrait " , died earlier this year.

Busse, a well-know and well-loved gay activist, threw a huge party last year to

celebrate living with HIV for 20 years.

" Living with HIV/AIDS is glossed over in statistics, reports and statements.

Seldom do we hear, see, or understand AIDS in the words of those whom it touches

most intimately, " reads the Conversations preface.

Funded by the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and

supported by the s Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the

Conversations project has other components: a mobile photographic display,

featuring portraits of the families with quotations from their testimonies, and

workshops for organisations, churches and other groups that use social therapy

as a creative vehicle to start dialogue and facilitate understanding on how

living with HIV impacts on both the family and the workplace.

Betsi Pendry, social therapist and project member commented: " After 25 years

into the epidemic there has not been much progress regarding exploratory as

opposed to didactic conversations about how HIV/AIDS is lived and experienced by

those most affected by it.

" We need to have conversations which explore and allow for the complexity, the

contradictions and the confrontations; to have conversations which move beyond a

one dimensional characterisation of HIV/AIDS as only a tragedy; to move beyond

talking to people about the ABCs; and to move beyond having conversations which

are fraught with ideological and moral agendas. We need to be able to have

conversations about the range of other issues that come up as we live with HIV

and AIDS as a daily part of our collective lives. "

The project attempts to do just this by showing that " people continue to grow,

be intimate, love and fall in love, have sex and enjoy sex, experience loss and

death, sadness and experience hope and renewal " , said Pendry. " They show that

people create new families, plan for the future and the future of their children

and that they are ordinary people. "

For more information contact Helen Hajiyiannis, +2711 339-2611

pg/oa

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Subscriber: AIDS treatments

[Guest guest]

U N I T E D N A T I O N S

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) -

[These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENT:

1 - SOUTH AFRICA: Life, love and HIV

1 - SOUTH AFRICA: Life, love and HIV

JOHANNESBURG, 18 November (PLUSNEWS) - " And life goes on ... " concludes the

preface to 'Conversations, HIV and the Family', a publication that aims to place

HIV/AIDS where it belongs - in the midst of real life itself, with all its

nuances and grit.

By documenting the personal accounts of families intimately affected by

HIV/AIDS, Conversations, a project of South Africa's Centre for AIDS

Development, Research and Evaluation (CADRE), cuts through the layers of

science, politics and ideology that effectively distance the epidemic from real

people and inadvertently perpetuate stigma.

Some of the 12 families featured took part in a lively launch of the project at

the Perinatal HIV Research Unit at Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto,

recently. Although still faced with daunting challenges, a couple of those

profiled spoke of how their lives had been paradoxically enriched by their

journeys with HIV and AIDS.

Valencia Mofokeng, who together with her large blended family runs an AIDS

organisation in Orange Farm, said the project had given her a much-needed

platform to communicate with others in similar situations: " We people with

HIV/AIDS don't have a place to express our feelings. We can talk to our

counselors but we need to share our feelings with others too. "

" I'm a mother of orphans, " said Seipati Mtsi, also featured in Conversations.

" I'm their mother and they trust me. They put their life in me. Now I know a lot

about HIV/AIDS. I was scared to touch someone. Now I can kiss, share a plate,

live with people with HIV/AIDS. Thank God for giving me that strength. "

The family portraits, by photographer Giséle Wulfsohn, who has documented

HIV/AIDS in South Africa for almost 20 years, show the intimacy of every day

family life. These are accompanied by personal testimonies of individuals and

family members who describe how their lives have been stretched and altered by

HIV and AIDS.

The families are typical in their many variations - nuclear, single parent,

extended, homosexual; and their stories document the gamut of human experience.

Selinah Mashinini, a single HIV-positive mother who lives with her sister and

children in andra township; Christo Greyling, an HIV-positive Dutch Reformed

minister who left the church to form an AIDS ministry and went on to marry and

have two children after discovering his status; Naboe Abrahams, pregnant and

widowed at the age of 15, who has since married again and had more children with

a man who still refuses to test.

Sadly, one of those featured in the project, Busse, who chose close

friends and his goddaughter for his " family portrait " , died earlier this year.

Busse, a well-know and well-loved gay activist, threw a huge party last year to

celebrate living with HIV for 20 years.

" Living with HIV/AIDS is glossed over in statistics, reports and statements.

Seldom do we hear, see, or understand AIDS in the words of those whom it touches

most intimately, " reads the Conversations preface.

Funded by the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and

supported by the s Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the

Conversations project has other components: a mobile photographic display,

featuring portraits of the families with quotations from their testimonies, and

workshops for organisations, churches and other groups that use social therapy

as a creative vehicle to start dialogue and facilitate understanding on how

living with HIV impacts on both the family and the workplace.

Betsi Pendry, social therapist and project member commented: " After 25 years

into the epidemic there has not been much progress regarding exploratory as

opposed to didactic conversations about how HIV/AIDS is lived and experienced by

those most affected by it.

" We need to have conversations which explore and allow for the complexity, the

contradictions and the confrontations; to have conversations which move beyond a

one dimensional characterisation of HIV/AIDS as only a tragedy; to move beyond

talking to people about the ABCs; and to move beyond having conversations which

are fraught with ideological and moral agendas. We need to be able to have

conversations about the range of other issues that come up as we live with HIV

and AIDS as a daily part of our collective lives. "

The project attempts to do just this by showing that " people continue to grow,

be intimate, love and fall in love, have sex and enjoy sex, experience loss and

death, sadness and experience hope and renewal " , said Pendry. " They show that

people create new families, plan for the future and the future of their children

and that they are ordinary people. "

For more information contact Helen Hajiyiannis, +2711 339-2611

pg/oa

[ENDS]

Your input is important. Please complete our annual survey at

http://www.irinnews.org/readership_survey.aspThis is non-reply e-mail. Please do

not hesitate to contact us at Mail@....

Principal donors: IRIN is generously supported by Australia, Canada, Denmark,

ECHO, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and

the United States of America. For more information, go to:

http://www.IRINnews.org/donors

[This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information

service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its

agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer

to the copyright page (Http://www.irinnews.org/copyright ) for conditions of

use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian

Affairs.]

PLUSNEWS

Tel: +27 11 895-1900

Fax: +27 11 784-6759

Email: Mail@...

To make changes to or cancel your subscription visit:

http://www.irinnews.org/subscriptions

Subscriber: AIDS treatments