AIDS Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa

In 2006, I began work on an essay centered around one family who live in a remote village in the Rakai district of Uganda,
the original epicenter of the AIDS pandemic. The family consists of eleven children—Lydia, Molly, Hallen, Scovia, Nasta, James,
Eddie, Dennis, Jackie, Agnes and Elliott—five of whom are AIDS orphans.

In 2008–09, I spent an additional two months shadowing this family, with the intention of wholeheartedly documenting what
it’s like to be a kid there. To this end, I attended school, gardened, ‘swam’ and foraged with them for both fruit and insects.
I even got jiggers. Their calling me ‘Mama’ snapped me back to the reality that I wasn't one of them. And I wasn’t. I photographed
the surgery on a young girl’s lymph nodes, a friend’s sister passing from AIDS, girl-child headed households and children being
tested for HIV.

The children I documented were simply a handful of the estimated 20 million orphan children sub-Saharan Africa will be home to
by 2010. According to UNICEF, “The staggering number of African children already orphaned due to AIDS is only the beginning
of a crisis of gargantuan proportions—the worst is yet to come.” The numbers continue to spiral upward, increasing exponentially.

In Uganda, where half the population is under fifteen, the current level of HIV in female to male teenagers is five to one. This is
an alarming statistic and one I feel needs to be addressed rapidly. Illiteracy among adult women is still very high, thus the chances
of girls being educated on issues relating to reproductive health and HIV/AIDS is extremely low. By learning there are alternative
choices available to her, a young girl—empowered to protect herself—could have a dynamic influence on her family, community,
and most importantly, her own life.