that photo was really sad. That boy's eyes… just wow.

I am so glad she had the opportunity to visit the continent. I have heard from many friends that it is the most amazing place to serve in because despite the fact that the people of the land don't have access to anything we consider a basic necessity, the spirit of God is so present. One friend said that from the moment she landed in the country, she felt like she was wrapped in God's arms and to come back here was like being pulled away violently because of how grossly different things are here. I am glad Alicia is working for the cause.

I admire this sort of misguided Western optimism, mostly because I can't have it myself.

Since AIDS has disproportionately devastated Africa, being the single unit that it is rather than a bunch of countries with their own issues, perhaps it is time to look into why so many of the present programs come up short.

If you are the 1 in 2 Africans without access to clean water, how will you hold those antiretrovirals down?
And what about those who don't have food to hold it down?
If you live in South Africa or Nigeria or Kenya, with entrepreneurial and opportunistic people, and need antiretrovirals, will you (or your daughter or wife) spread your legs for the men who hoard these medicines?
Will you need a "sugar daddy" to have access to these as well as the clean water to take the meds with and if he's generous, perhaps some food for you and your family so you can hold the cocktail down?
If you live in the western part of the Dark Continent(TM), will malaria kill you first?
Dysentery? Pneumonia? TB? Measles? Depression?
If you live in any of the regions with active fighting of some form or another, will you risk getting raped and killed for those meds?

If you're keeping a child alive so they can be killed by something other than AIDS, what sort of accomplishment is that? I know that most of the HIV+ people who have the necessary set-ups for successful treatment already have medication that may or may not be legit.
Failing to acknowledge the uniqueness and complexity of issues is precisely why so many well-intentioned programs fall short of expectations.

Also, while the spirit of the children might not be dead, the same cannot be said for a growing group of young South African adults who wake up each morning to live wildly and take as many people down with them. Their president still believes that HIV is caused by poverty (and it is to some extent, but not in the way he's talking about it) and overcrowding, not an STI. It's more upsetting that South Africans, despite their failure and everyone else's to realize this, are way better off than many. I've recently been reminded of how my grandparents, mother, aunts and uncles lived through the civil war and I shudder when I realize that there are probably a lot of kids out there living in the f-ing misery of refugee camps if they're lucky AND worrying about antiretrovirals that their malnourished bodies can't even use.

I'm not really a fan of painting a very depressing picture of the DC but these other big issues impact Alicia's cause. I'm not saying it's her place to fix these. It isn't. But saying that a 13 year old boy looks 8 or 9 because he has AIDS kinda paints an overly simplistic picture.

Daria, that was really nicely well-written. Do you have any suggestions how African nations can be improved? Here's just some of my ideas:

African nations so desperately need better education programs, more schools, better water drainage/pumping systems, better hygiene care, more hospitals and doctors, more medical programs, better planned parenthood/safe sex programs, more farms (for food like rice, vegetables and fruits, animals, etc), more plants, more animals, and just… sigh. more of EVERYTHING.

Daria that gives us all much to ponder, I think the one thing we have to recognize about Alicia's depiction of Africa and the AIDS epidemic that is tearing it apart is that it is her personal depiction. Yes, saying a 13-year-old boy looks 8 or 9 because he has AIDS paints a simplistic picture but maybe that is the only way she could say it. So many come back from visiting Africa with not much too say because they can't barely put into words what they saw.

And in terms of how the African nations can be improved, I think it lies in people like us choosing to make a difference.

Last night in Bible Study a seed was dropped into my spirit about kingdom agendas and if the things we pursue on this earth fulfill God's divine purpose or our own. And I think if we all thought this way–and this not just a Christianity thing–than we might be better off. Not only is it about a kingdom agenda, it's about an agenda bigger than the one we are living out right now.

While we all might not be called to pick up and move to Africa to become missionaries or doctors without borders or volunteers, we are called to help in any way we see fit that can change the land. You see the disparity and you do something whether it means organizing your own effort to raise funds, send provisions, or just pray.

From hundreds of thousands of miles away we can help. There is a scripture in the Bible that says "If we would humble ourselves, turn from our wicked ways and pray, then God will heal the land." Even prayer, as small as it seems to people, every single one of us in our respective faiths can change things if we would only believe.

Well, I believe at the least, the US should stop sabotaging any success by spreading our own highly ineffective abstinence only education (25% of US teen girls have at least one STI) to other countries. There would be a fantastic start.

Effective farming practices would be more like it as well as an economy set up so that people can actually buy food that is planted. Droughts and dry seasons can't be helped but just as some countries thrived in spite of it years ago (Ghana and Nigeria during parts of the 70s and even early 80s), they should be able to at least weather that storm. The food and farming thing is far more complicated than this since food shortages are caused by a combination of issues and specific to particular areas. Sometimes, it's just stupidity like with Mugabe who could not f-k up his country's economy more if he tried in addition to eliminating the "white man's" farming practices to return to "native" ones. Native ones from ages ago that no one remembers and I imagine are far more efficient than the mess that's going on now. You don't screw your people to prove a point. Get rid of the white people if that's what you want, but purging your society of even the good they brought is just absurd.

Education is complex. Some places just aren't safe for girls due to the threat of violence. School fees are high so if people can afford them to begin with, they'll send the boy and keep the girl at home. If it's a society in which a woman can't have a job that earns anywhere what a man can, what's the point of having an educated girl that you can't off-load to any suitors later on since all that book learnin makes us gals less pliant?

Doctors and other educated people leave because practicing in many of these countries would break most people's spirits. Brain drain is said to be a result of greed and lack of loyalty to one's homeland. It's true for some but why would you want to be a surgeon in a place where you operate on a person and they later die because the antibiotics or anticoagulants available were fake? Why would you want to be a professor in a place that you're not being paid (so you can't feed yourself or your family) and professors are on strike due to these continued frustrations or there's a coup? A relative just moved here. She's been in med school for nearly 6 years because the government won't pay teachers so they stop working? I absolutely agree that education is vital to the success of these countries. Accomplishing this is far easier said than done.

Lack of infrastructure has to do again with horrible governments. The West will line their pockets and embrace them. They put on a show for the Bushes and Blairs of the world. They might spend a bit on a road or some plumbing for their own people but little changes. The people in the Niger delta where most of the oil from W Africa comes from don't have electricity or plumbing. It's not that it's off due to power outages or water being shut off. It was never there to begin with. Meanwhile, their water supply, already contaminated by human waste, is now contaminated with oil as well. I will say that some governments are truly helpless. They simply don't have the resources. For others though, it's a choice.

There's far more to add but I have to go be constructive now.

…and I am going to guess that post-colonial Africans are weary of missionaries by the way. Again, I think they come with the best of intentions but they don't treat the people like humans, like equals. Same goes for aid workers. Realizing how some of these people, again with the best of intentions, participate in the near obliteration of people's cultures makes me very angry now.

As for the ability to improve, look to most young countries. Many of these "countries" were formed by white people who divided and erased line as they saw fit, not thinking about the people at all. These are all young countries. Most are still artificially put together pieces that now have to sort things out, generally with one side supported by the aid of Western countries (France supplied the Hutus in Rwanda for example) protecting whatever interests they still have there. The US had it's own civil war nearly 100 years post-independence yet we expect these patchwork countries to sort themselves out in 40-50 years?

Ms. Keys, Don't know where you've been for the last 10 to 15 years but that problem has been there for a long time. If you can give away your own $Millions to that part of the world, then maybe it can help them for the meantime, but the US becoming the social welfare and country to save all the starvation worldwide is just impossible. Most americans can no longer afford to drive to go on vacation due to high fuel costs. I know you dont drive but fly on your rented learjet instead. Stop living a life of luxury and give your Millions to africa. lets see how far that will go, but that will help some until you run out for sure. thanks.

The money that the US spends on aid to countries that need it (Iraq and Israel receive the most aid by the way) would make no difference in the life of Americans. Other Western and even developing countries have managed to help those who need it even when their economies were in the toilet. The government is not trimming money elsewhere so that they can give to we unruly savages. They're just trimming social programs that they planned to trim anyway. That resentment should be targeted towards the crappy distribution of said funds as well as general waste.

Alicia's heart is in the right place and she is certainly putting her money where her mouth is, but even if her program works out surprisingly well, she and many other millionaires can form tiny NGOs at best. Unless you have Bill Gates and Warren Buffet's bank accounts combined, you can only do so much.

Yeah but that's the point now isn't it. Regardless of where the money was earmarked to come from or what other use it might have had, at this point we should be pouring it into drilling machines to rip apart Alaska to find domestic oil. 2 years ago it was all fine and good to give a little something when you had excess to give to help whatever cause you thought worthy, now, the cause I now find worthy is paying for food and gas.

You know folks live on that land that they'd be ripping apart for domestic oil, right? And they'd like to continue living there unmolested…

Well several are suing because their town will be underwater in the not-so-distant future. Most have no one to sue and no one to listen. That's why they kidnap foreigners there. It's the only time the world listens. After the foreign oil workers are released, the interest in the issues of the region dies.

…and to be completely honest, I loathe that picture and dislike her a little more every time I look at it. It just seems so exploitative and contrived. I wonder what this kid was thinking as this white South African woman snapped pictures, reveling in his vulnerability, the good shot that she'd taken. This isn't putting a face to the AIDS crisis. It's a celebrity sitting next to a crying kid while this woman snaps away at him. It makes me wonder if the frightened expression on his little face is from grief or the tears of a kid who is confused and overwhelmed by their presence. It makes me want to rescue him from them.

It's the opposite of the heartbreaking Kevin Carter photo. I don't believe that the photographer gave a s–t for one second about this kid. Just another vulture feasting on the pain of others for a chance at a Pulitzer perhaps.

Deaf Feminist Punk- The little boy's eyes hit me too.

Daria, are you family Ibo or Iybo? Love your posts on this topic by the way. What do you think about China's involvement in Africa? "Young South Africans Yliving wildly", can you please expand on that.

thank you, Daria. thank you. you say a lot of things that i say and think. but you do it a lot more nicely.

I am saddened by the fact that the "blacks in Hollywood" and "Obama's race" post received more comments than this post.

@meadow: thanks

@ChicNoir: Ibo is anglo for Igbo.
As for South Africans, the idea that everyone is just full of hope is utter B.S. They don't have decent jobs available. Girls and women are raped and gang-raped for giggles basically. Women have gotten in on the raping too. I guess they figure if someone violated them and infected them with a disease, why not force yourself on random men and infect them too? If you have to work for two months to get money that you can rob someone of in one day and spend having a good time, why the hell would you pick work? It's the sense that there's nothing left to lose and law and morality and ethics mean nothing. It certainly isn't the AIDS alone. Swaziland and several other countries have MUCH higher HIV/AIDS rates but don't have these same problems, at least not nearly to this extent. I got frustrated reading about it because then my aunt who works in this field will then tell me about women whose husbands and sons have been killed, and they and their daughters have been raped. These women are dealing with war and HIV/AIDS and of course unemployment and stigma from their communities, but they've handled their situation with far more grace. I'm not from South Africa. I can't pretend to understand the impact of apartheid and the remnants of it in their society so I have to remind myself not to be overly critical. It's also not everyone. It's just certain pockets of the population.

thanks for coming back to answer my questions Daria. I also read about the recent attacks against foreingers in South Africa, very sad.

I can't believe women are going about raping men. Do you have article I could check out. I read some time ago that some men were raping babies because they believed that having sex with a baby will cure them of HIV/AIDS.