Cdn journalist tells 28 stories of AIDS in Africa in powerful new book

There was a precise moment in 2002 when Canadian journalist Stephanie Nolen suddenly understood the catastrophic effect of AIDS in Africa.

"I was chatting with Lillian Chandawili, an HIV-positive 35-year-old widow who looks after her sister's orphaned children as well as her own, on the porch of her house in Nkhotakota, Malawi," recalls Nolen.

"As the villagers came by to greet 'the white stranger,' Lillian would quietly remark, 'He has it,' 'He lost his wife' or 'She lost her children.' I realized there was no one left in Nkhotakota to farm, trade or work in the city to earn money. Everyone who could have been working was either sick, nursing someone who was sick, or looking after orphans," Nolen says sadly.

"At that moment I saw beyond the numbers of deaths and infections on paper, and realized how HIV/AIDS had cut this place off at the knees."

The Republic of Malawi in southeastern Africa is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most densely populated countries. It is estimated that anywhere from 15 to 30 per cent of Malawi's 13 million people are HIV-positive. Average life expectancy is 43 years of age.

The devastation that AIDS has caused in Malawi has repeated itself in countless villages and cities across Africa. In "28: Stories of AIDS in Africa," Nolen takes the reader on an emotional journey through the continent as she tells the stories of 28 people fighting HIV/AIDS - one for each of the 28 million people living with the disease in Africa today.

The reader meets Cynthia Leshomo, Botswana's Miss HIV Stigma-Free; Andualem Ayalew, an Ethiopian soldier ostracized from the army after revealing he was HIV-positive; Lefa Khoele, a 12-year-old Lesotho boy with the disease desperately trying to pass Grade 3; and many others fighting for better access to drug treatments and trying to raise awareness of the disease. The stories are powerful, heartfelt and deeply human.

The people in "28," of course, tell a larger story. UNAIDS (The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) has predicted that without increased international aid, there could be 90 million AIDS cases in Africa by 2025.

And yet, says Nolen, the response from the developed world to a continent that could have 18 million AIDS orphans by 2010 has been achingly slow.

Nolen, who grew up in Ottawa and Montreal, is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent but has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She now reports from her home in Johannesburg where she lives with her partner and their seven-month-old son.

She laments the dearth of media coverage on the epidemic.

"I would travel for weeks and never see another western reporter," she explains. "What's happening here without the spectacle that gets you on the evening news is the biggest story in the world. Why am I the only person out here?"

Why indeed?

"It's because they're black and poor and live in countries that are economically and politically marginal," says Nolen matter-of-factly.