Imagine waking up every day and wondering how you will feed your three young children that statistically, will not make it beyond the age of 43 and may possibly die during infancy. Families alike in many different southern Africa countries like Zimbabwe, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and some eastern countries like Ethiopia live almost identical lives. With a great demand and an economy that is dependent upon migrant labor, many fathers provide for their families as best they can by working menial jobs more than 200 miles away. Such jobs allow them to visit maybe two or three times in one year. The separation from their wives does not stop these men from having relations. The culture of these people makes it a shameful act to openly talk about sex but "everywhere there's premarital sex, sex as recreation," which is one of the main causes of the spread of this deadly disease, AIDS (TIME p. 6).
Very little is being done about this terrible misfortune that is finding its way into the lives of so many uneducated people, the majority of them being children. Many fairytale ideas float around in local gossip as to where the blame for this terrible sickness is to be attributed. Some say witchcraft or a punishment from God for some tiny indiscretion while others believe "the disease was introduced by the white population as a way to control black Africans after the end of the apartheid" (Miller and Rockwell, p. 168). Others are too worried about other problems such as famine, war, violence of ethnic hatred, regular illness of poverty, and other such tribulations. With the combination of uneducated and culturally controlled people, the chances of stopping the spread of this prevalent disease are growing slim. .
In Ethiopia there are more than 3million cases of HIV infected individuals, and with this large number the majority of them are young, helpless children. Little is being done by outside sources or other resources from within to aid in the cessation of this epidemic.