In the second year of his doctoral studies, Mark Hunter was doing preliminary research on labour issues in South Africa. The first was filled with HIV-negative children. Eligible for overseas adoption, they were learning English and being taught about American culture.
The second housed HIV-positive children who lacked access to treatment and were deemed unadoptable. In the interests of fairness, the aid organization funding both orphanages had decreed that the second group of children would spend their short lives learning the same skillsβskills that, for them, were useless. How many other well-intentioned aid organizations are making these kinds of decisions?
And how does it affect the children? In the past 30 years, AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide. Another 34 million live with the disease. Against this cruel backdrop, the gentle emotions that tether close relationships can get lost in the stark statistics of the infected, the dying and the dead.
Public health reports focus on risk factors and transmission rates. Love, affection and intimacy are more difficult to quantify. Well, because she has three boyfriends. She needs one to pay her rent, one to pay for food and one to buy clothes. Hunter realized he was observing the intersection of several societal, historical and economic trends that were, in effect, driving the epidemic in South Africa. Due in part to the lasting effects of racial discrimination, South Africa has experienced a very large rise in unemployment a radical decrease in marriage rates and a significant increase in the migration of rural women.
Thirty years ago, a rural woman tended to remain in her village and marry a local man who then supported her. Fast forward to the s. Rural women left their villages to find work, which paid less than they needed to survive. Lowered marriage rates resulted in sex outside marriage, with a larger turnover of sexual partners due to the high migration rates.
