As part of the
UN High Level Meetings on HIV and AIDS this week at the United Nations in New York, my daughter was asked to participate in the Interfaith Service given this morning at the Tillman Chapel Church Center for the United Nations.
My husband and I have a dear friend who is an interfaith minister who does most of her work in the HIV/AIDS community and works on an international level bringing AIDS awareness and the knowledge of ways to promote a healing ministry to various religious organizations around the country and the world. She asked my daughter to read a letter from an African child that expressed her experience with the pandemic.
One of the most striking aspects of attitudes to HIV and AIDS in the world at large is the stigma manifested as superstition and paranoia in different cultures that have been forced to confront the problem.
Below the fold is an excuse for me to be proud of my kick-ass, bleeding-heart liberal daughter, with some thoughts about the tyranny of society.
My daughter is a 10-year-old drama queen with a liberal heart the size of Alaska. She loves performing in public but
hates, hates, hates reading in public, even in front of her class. So, I was a tad surprised that the "bleeding heart" won out over her natural dyslexia-based shyness when she was asked to be one of three children to read a short letter from a child in Africa today at the Tillman Chapel Church Center for the United Nations morning service:
This is the letter she read:
Dear Delegates of the United Nations:
I am very concerned about the ongoing spread of HIV and AIDS. Today about 40 million people around the world are living with HIV and AIDS.
We ask you to keep your promises made in the year 2001 because most people in my country are dying of AIDS. People who get infected with AIDS die before their right time. They die for various reasons such as stigma. Stigma means a mark of disgrace. Stigma causes people to kill themselves.
Thank you for all you are doing to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS. I am willing to help my country anyway I can.
Yours sincerely,
Jacqueline Emwallay
As a mom and a longtime supporter and friend of many in the gay community, I read this when she first brought it home and waded through the part that was obviously fed to the child by a teacher or other adult (the introduction and closing) and was cut to the quick by the child's own words from her heart:
People who get infected with AIDS die before their right time. They die for various reasons such as stigma. Stigma means a mark of disgrace. Stigma causes people to kill themselves.
It even pains me to cut and paste that part of the letter. It's the wisdom of a child that has seen far too much pain for her years and who sees vividly that the pain is worsened by arbitrary morals based on ancient and irrational fears and proscriptions. It reeks of a sociey stagnated in the past and fearful of change since the balance of power might shift unexpectedly.
I'm not critiquing African society here per se, but our own and any society who's powerful have balanced their power on the tip of superstition and ignorance.
I lost a lost of friends in the 80s and 90s to AIDS. It now seems a long time ago. I haven't felt the pain and anger of that horrible Reaganesqe era in a long time ... until I heard my daughter's quiet voice reading this letter.