Photo voices

On World AIDS Day today, I’m posting the images and words of a few people who speak for themselves.

The photos below are from the exhibit Photo-Voice: HIV and AIDS Education for Young People in Africa, presented by UNESCO and the Virginio Bruni Tedeschi Foundation. The photos in Photo-Voice were taken by young people, parents and teachers from Angola, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland.

The photographers focused on two themes: students and teachers affected by HIV and AIDS, and young people, sexuality and HIV.

Here are a few of the photos, along with captions written by the photographer who took each picture. (Photos are courtesy of UNESCO.)


© UNESCO/SWANNEPHA, Welile, female student, Swaziland - This is my teacher, she is also HIV positive, like me. She made my life easier by disclosing her status to us in class. She has restored my self esteem. I just love her. She is my pillar.

 

© UNESCO/SWANNEPHA, Kehtsiwe, 14 years old, female student, Swaziland - I am living with HIV and have been on antiretroviral treatment since 2002. I got sick early in my childhood. At school I faced challenges of being stigmatised and discriminated against by my teacher. She told other children not to play with me and also told me in the face that she was ‘tired of teaching a sick child’. I confronted her and told her that I could not change the situation. She then accepted my situation and wrote a note to apologise to my mother. I pray that other children never get to experience such injustice. I aspire to be surgeon; I already perform operations on frogs.

© UNESCO/RNP+ Angola, Cristovao, 14 years old, male student, Angola - My parents and two of my brothers are HIV positive. Very soon, as a result of their condition, our income started to decrease and I went to study at community school. HIV and AIDS is taught and openly discussed in schools managed by NGOs which have specific activities, but now that I am in public school I don’t hear about HIV and AIDS anymore, with the exception of the biology teacher... It would be good for schools (from primary schools to universities) to speak not only about HIV and AIDS but also about other sexually transmitted diseases. I would like to join a group of activists in my school in to fight HIV.

© UNESCO/LENEPWHA, Peete, 23 years old, male student, Lesotho - Sometimes when I think back on my life for the past ten years, I realise that I did not have enough knowledge on the pandemic to take care of myself. My young friends remind me that life should be enjoyed, and yet I worry that unless they are protected from contracting HIV they will soon have the virus like me and may not enjoy life as they do now. They deserve to be happy and live life with no worries. I believe that they should be adequately prepared now at a very early age so that they will grow into young adults competent enough to take care of themselves and protect others from HIV.

Photo-Voice is part of a UNESCO project funded by the Virginio Bruni Tedeschi Foundation (created by Marisa Bruni Tedeschi in memory of her son Virginio – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s brother – who passed away of AIDS-related complications in 2006). Photo-Voice organisers say the exhibit uses the power of images to enable participants to "to bear witness" and to raise awareness.

These photos are by African photographers -- but AIDS is a global issue. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 22 million of the 33 million people living with HIV, but HIV incidence has fallen over 25 percent in 22 Sub-Saharan African countries since 2001, while it's increasing in other parts of the world (such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia). In North America and Western Europe, an estimated 100,000 people were newly infected in 2009 compared to 97,000 in 2001. We're in this together.

HIV and AIDS is a human rights issue, and dealing with it is a joint responsibility. It doesn't call for pity; it calls for empathy, solidarity and action.

An Education

Mrs. Letela (centre) and some of her staff

Mrs. Letela was my boss for two years. You couldn’t get much past her. When she disagreed with you she would give you that direct, expressionless stare that made you want to look somewhere else. But she had a ready laugh, too, and was quick to adapt if she saw a way to improve things. Her focus was unfailingly the well-being of the students who attended the high school where she was principal.

Molly Letela’s school, where I went to teach in the late 1980s, was just outside Teyateyaneng, Lesotho in southern Africa. My husband and I were two of four Canadians who worked as teachers at Assumption High School then. Mrs. Letela employed several expatriates, not because Lesotho didn’t have qualified teachers but because many local teachers got jobs in the South African bantustans in those days. Mrs. Letela, an expatriate herself, came from Swaziland but had made her home in Lesotho.

Fields near Assumption High School, TY / Credit: Dave Smith

Assumption High School’s compound was a rectangle of low brick buildings set in a wide valley. Beyond the surrounding fields, where yellow cornstalks struggled out of dry red earth, were the dreamy blues and purples of the distant mountains. Behind the school lay a dusty road along which boys herding cattle, men wrapped in wool blankets, and women balancing lumpy packages, wooden crates or even single bars of soap on their heads passed by.

Mrs. Letela was energetic and ageless. You could count on her to support you. Once I asked her if she could come to my history class to do a lesson on local history that was based on oral tradition; somehow I didn’t feel right teaching kids about stuff that they probably knew from their grandparents. Mrs. Letela didn’t hesitate to do that for me. I remember when after a few months of working there I mentioned that I’d been mildly nervous about standing in front of a class of fifty Form A students, most of whom knew little English. She laughed and replied that the students would have been even more nervous about their first day in high school, and with me.

Mrs. Letela knew what was important for her students: to study hard, get a regular meal every day, learn agricultural and other skills, and if possible to move up through high school. It wasn’t an easy context in which to build a school, but Mrs. Letela did everything she could, including finding local and donor funding for equipment and programs. When I checked recently there were indications that at least a few years ago she was still doing so, although I can’t be sure.

Back then, people in Lesotho were just beginning to talk about AIDS. Today, almost a quarter of people in Lesotho between ages 15 and 49 have HIV/AIDS. I can’t imagine what it’s like there now, what the disease has done to families, communities, and schools. I wonder about the kids I taught, how they’re faring.

I hope that they have the opportunity to watch their own kids go through school. I hope that at least some of them are sending their own children to Assumption High School. I hope that Mrs. Letela, or someone with her drive and commitment, is still at the helm. If not, I hope she's enjoying retirement and her own grandchildren.


Form C, 1987 / Credit: Denise Deby