Death of a Nation

If something in Swaziland doesn’t change, at the current negative
growth rate of population, the SiSwati people will be extinct by the
year 2050. AIDS is stealing life, physically and emotionally and
spiritually. The cloak of
hopelessness suffocates those left behind with fear and desperation.
Many children have forgotten how to smile or play. All they can do is
cling to the closest hand offered to them.

In Matata, the shopping centre nearest to Nsoko, there is a post
office, dry cleaners, supermarket, petrol station, cafe and a coffin
store. I’ve heard it said that there is a shortage of skilled labor in
the form of carpenters because there are too many coffins to build and
not enough builders of coffins.

Swaziland is dying, and its people don’t have the power to stop it
themselves–in their present state. They need to be empowered to
believe that they can actually change their own lives, their own
villages and their country.

They need to be told that they are the ones responsible for saving Swaziland.

There’s a deadening cycle of poverty that sucks bones dry and leaves
them to rattle. Swaziland’s death cry is more of a death whisper, and
it’s usually preceded by the death sentence: HIV+. Those with the
determining disease fall on the far side of the line. It’s something
everyone is reluctant to talk about, but nearly 50% of the people are
living and dying with. Thousands of children, orphaned because their
parents died from AIDS, have never been tested for the disease–maybe
because it’s assumed they have it.

Those with the + resign themselves to their fate with a hopelessness
thicker than anything I’ve ever encountered. One World Racer, after
meeting a very sick HIV+ woman and her baby, was offered something out
of sheer desperation.

“When I get sick, I won’t be able to take care of my baby,” the mother said. “I want you to have him as a gift.”

The mother/father generation is dying the fastest, leaving behind the
children and the grandmothers (go-go’s). The go-go’s are left to raise
their grandchildren, and the children are left to work the farms to get
food to eat. Only those with a little money for the fees and uniforms
can afford the luxury of time in attending school (instead of trying to
scrounge up money or food on the farm). So the children with no parents
can’t go to school, and thus when they get old enough they have no
skills to offer the job market and thus can’t get work. The workers of
Swaziland are dying, and the job market is thus drying up–yet
strangely, those who need jobs often can’t find them. A vast majority
are just struggling for sheer survival: food, water, shelter.