When we think of the grandmothers we are working to help in Africa, their children, grandchildren, families and friends, how much can we grasp of the impact of HIV/AIDS on their lives from our sheltered viewpoint?
Stephanie Nolen was the Globe and Mail correspondent inAfrica for six years and wrote this very readable book of personal encounters with 28 different lives.
The book was written in 2007 and many advances have been made in the ensuing years but along with miracle drugs has also come worldwide economic turmoil which has meant the situation and root causes remain largely unchanged. The book is available in the Calgary Public Library.

Nkosi Johnson was the face of children with AIDS in South Africa.  Given a home by a white South African family, he was given the opportunity to speak about living with AIDS at a time when the South African leaders were ignoring the crisis in their midst.  Articulate and self-possessed, he talked about our shared humanity and needs.  ‘We are all the same’.

In We Are All The Same, Jim Wooten interweaves the story of Nkosi with the history of blacks in South Africa and the stories of other Africans with AIDS.  By giving AIDS in South Africa a face, Nkosi makes it impossible for the reader not to feel compassion for all the children suffering like this.
This book provides the stories to humanize the crisis in Africa.

Binti, a thirteen year-old girl in Malawi, is very happy with her life.  The youngest of three children, she stars in a radio show called ‘Gogo’s Family’, attends a private school and mocks her older sister for being madly in love with her boyfriend.  Her mother has died some years earlier and her father runs ‘The Heaven Shop’, a coffin-making business which shows no sign of ever being short of work.

Her world is turned upside-down by the illness and subsequent death of her father.  Her family is separated and it is only when she goes to live with her grandmother that things begin to improve.
The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis is a Young Adult book which deals honestly with some of the ways that young girls can be infected with AIDS and the consequences of this devastating disease.  It’s a quick read which explains why the Stephen Lewis Foundation is doing all it can to help the grandmothers of Africa.

Recommended for those who want an introduction to AIDS in Africa.