Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the end, we put some of them onto islands in the lake and wouldn't let people visit them.
We treated it like leprosy, something that could be contained, but we were not fast enough.
By then it was already a way of life.'
'In the Congo, we did not blame witches. We all thought that the lubricant in condoms
was to blame - that you could actually get AIDS from a condom!'
'It is a lack of education,' said Moses.
'We all thought you whites were out to kill us, sending condoms here!' By now Boston
was roaring with uncontrolled laughter. Then, at once, he stopped, and fixed Moses with a
look. 'Do you have AIDS?' he asked, quite nonchalantly.
My heart plunged at Boston's lack of tact, but Moses simply smiled benevolently and
shook his head. 'I am one of the fortunate sons. Both my parents died of AIDS when I was
a boy, and I could so easily have been infected. But I was not, and this is why I wanted to
help all of these children.'
We walked back into the sunlight. All around, the children were playing. Most of them
had barely known their parents; Moses was all they had. He had not asked for any money,
only that - through me - the world might know a little of his story. All the same, I handed
him a few dollars. It was nothing more than a token, perhaps enough to feed a few of these
children for a while. With Boston still shaking his head, we left Moses behind. Moved
by his complete selflessness, we went back across the rubbish dumps, back to the beach,
to watch those teenage fishermen laugh and joke. Soon, I imagined, some of them would
have children of their own; and then, perhaps, they too would fall prey to 'slim' and dis-
appear, leaving those children behind for Moses to look after. I wondered how many of
those children would make adulthood, and how many of those would go on to fish on this
lake and produce more children for the orphanage to take in. Moses was right: there was
only one way the situation could change, and it was not with a few dollars pressed into his
hand. It was with education, a changing of hearts and minds, the disintegration of all the
myths of witchcraft, treacherous American scientists, and poisoned condoms, that thrived
in places like this. But here, among people who either didn't notice or didn't seem to care,
it was difficult to imagine how that could ever come to pass.
The following morning we walked north, away from Kasansero, with the glittering ex-
panses of the lake on my right, a vast forest inland to my left, and the soft tread of sand
beneath my feet.
