By Satya Hiru Patel

It is one thing to read about AIDS in Africa while sitting in the comfort of your own home. It is quite another to personally watch the deadly virus attack young lives. Working as a volunteer at the Boona-Baana Center for Children’s Rights in Tanzania, I saw how AIDS has painted the fear of death in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of young people from the ages 12 to 20 who are stricken with the disease. For you see, those who have AIDS live the daily terror of becoming sick and dying. And, until you’ve seen this terror, you can’t truly understand the disease.

“When people find out you have HIV, they point and laugh at you on the streets,” says Sophia Jamhuri, a 17 year old at Kiota Women’s Health and Development in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. “Parents accuse their daughters of being prostitutes and tell them to run away to a life on the streets. Once you get HIV, you lose any hope of living a good life.” Typically when a teen contracts HIV in Tanzania, their family disowns them and their society rejects them. Their entire support system comes crashing down.

Like other young people across the world, teens in Tanzania want to love normal lives filled with hopes and dreams. But these are not normal times for normal teens. Yet it is this normalcy that the girls at the Kiota Center crave more than anything else. Sophia dreams of one day becoming a journalist. Edina Frank, 14, wants to study engineering, but may never get the chance. “My parents are poor, so when I was young I had to work in the streets carrying things to the market. After that, there was no more school for me.”

Tanzania is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world and it is this enormous poverty that perpetuates the problem of HIV. When asked if they worried about their husbands one day leaving them, two dozen 12-20 year olds answered with a resounding yes. “If a husband can’t afford to support his wife and child, he’ll leave,” says Edina. “After that, women put themselves at risk for HIV [by turning to prostitution] just to survive.”

In places like Petende, a small village in northeast Tanzania, AIDS is not a disease that affects a few; it’s a social epidemic. And the saddest part about it all is that most people don’t know they have it. “Young people don’t want to get tested or can’t afford testing. When they are tested, they often don’t show up for the results” says Thomas Masilingi, associate director for the Boona-Baana Center for Children’s Rights. “They don’t want to confront that they might be dying.”

The first three cases of HIV came to northwest Tanzania in 1983. In only three years, it had spread to every region of the country. And while in 20 years, only 150,000 cases of HIV have been officially reported it is believed that 2 million Tanzanians have the disease right now.

With the start of the new millennium, the plight of people ravaged by HIV/AIDS was finally recognized when President Mkapa declared a National Disaster and called on government, political, and civil leaders to work with NGO’s to find a solution. Widespread poverty has made outreach difficult for the public sector, but last year, a new and promising government strategy was enacted. It focuses on a cultural response stressing openness in addressing all issues related to HIV/AIDS, including very culturally sensitive issues of sexuality and sexual relations.

Young people bear the greatest burden of the AIDS pandemic, and recognizing this, a group of teens attended the International Conference on AIDS and STI’s in Africa, normally a gathering reserved for scientists and political leaders. There they issued a declaration of their needs and priorities. They demanded youth participation and youth-friendly services, parental involvement, education about HIV/AIDS and sexuality, protection for girls and women, and partnerships with people that have the deadly disease. Many teens first learn about HIV on the streets and not at school. “I first heard of HIV when I was nine,” says Sophia. “A family member died from it, but my parents didn’t tell me - it was someone on the streets.”

Young people are now demanding to be educated on the risks and realities of HIV, and peer education is gaining popularity. Habiba Hasan, 16, has been through peer-led health classes in the last several years and it has changed the way she approaches dating. “Before, I didn’t have any reservations about dating. Now, I know that I only want to have one boyfriend and don’t want to have sex. I just want to be safe and healthy.”

In Tanzania, five UN agencies are working with the World Health Organization and the World Bank to combat AIDS. The World Bank, for example, seems to have found a winning strategy in their “Working for a World Without AIDS” program. It has been airing on East Africa TV, the Tanzanian equivalent of MTV. In a world where R & B music reigns supreme, celebrities convey a message of prevention. When Beyonce Knowles talks about the importance of preventing the transmission of HIV from mother to newborn baby, young Tanzanians listen. Thomas Masilingi of the Boona-Baana Center sees this as a winning outreach. “People like Beyonce have the full attention of young people here,” he said. “Her message is getting through to every teenager in the country.”

Still, everywhere you look in Tanzania, you see people in need. Infection levels are high, and access to care is low. Teens face a future in which an entire generation may be lost to AIDS, but they remain optimistic. “My baby will go to school all the way through university, even though I didn’t,” says Edina. “I won’t let HIV keep my child from living a happy, successful life.”

It’s this type of attitude that gives volunteers in Tanzania hope. But in order to make a more significant dent in the lives of teenagers in Africa, more people around the world have to recognize how big a problem the AIDS epidemic is in this part of the world where just 10,000 more volunteers can really make a difference.