News Search Search this site or the web powered by FreeFind Site search Web search Story archive		December 2, 2003, Scotsman FAMILIES WHO FALL PREY TO THE 'EAGLE' Gethin Chamberlain In Lusaka IN ZAMBIA, they call AIDS the "eagle", because when it catches you, it carries you away. In the villages of Kapululwe, a little way outside the capital, Lusaka, the eagle has been busy. Noria Longwani has already lost her husband and two children, and now a third is dying. When her children died, she took in their children. Now, at 64, she sits in the shade of a tree outside the mud-brick hut with the straw roof that she shares with five grandchildren. When her daughter dies - and she will - there will be more children to cram into the three tiny rooms. Now, sheltering from the midday heat, she kneels on a straw mat surrounded by the family she cannot support. The children are dressed in the filthiest of clothing. It did not used to be like this, Noria says. Parents never died so young. She was born in 1939 in the village where she still lives. She went to the local school and at 15 married Dismus Shapomgo. He came across the river to look for a wife and chose Noria; neighbours told him she was hard-working and beautiful. She smiles at the memory. Beautiful was good, but hard-working was more important. When a man was looking for a wife, a woman who would work hard in the maize and cotton fields and look after the weeding and the kitchen chores was a woman worth marrying. The couple farmed the fields around their home, and Noria bore Dismus seven children. Life was easy, she says - they had a lot of animals to plough the fields, and it was very rare to come across orphans. Their children grew up, married and moved away to find work. And then the eagle landed among them. Vivian was the first to go, in 1996. He had complained of chest pains for a long time and needed an operation on his arm. Then he died, and so did his wife. Winald died two years later. He was a soldier, serving in Mozambique. He began to feel unwell, then he died. So did his wife. Between them, they left five children, Sharon, 13, Anod, 12, Caroline, nine, Maso, nine and Douglas, five. There was no-one to look after the children apart from Noria and Dismus. Noria does not really understand why her children died, but she knows something has changed. She has heard of AIDS, knows it kills and knows a lot of people have died. Dismus died three years ago and Noria struggles to look after the children on her own, working in neighbouring fields to earn a little money to buy food. She is worried about how to pay for them to go to school, knowing she has no way of finding the money. When her daughter dies, there will be more children, and less money. A few miles away along the dirt roads linking the tiny communities, Margaret Mwinga sits under a tree, next to the pile of stones she and the children she has taken in have broken up to sell for building work. They find stones in fields, and smash them with small hammers into jagged pebbles. In a good month, she makes 20,000 kwacha (about GBP 2.50), although a family the size of the one gathered around her needs 500,000 kwacha to subsist. Like Noria, she has lost two children, Charles and Margaret, as well as her husband. Unlike Noria, she fears she too has AIDS; before long, the seven grandchildren she has taken in will have no-one. Margaret married at 18 and had ten children. Her husband fell ill with chest pains, coughing, diarrhoea - symptoms that would now point to AIDS. She looked after him for six years. When he died, his family came and took one of the couple's two cows and left her with the children. Unlike Noria, she understands about AIDS, and how it is transmitted. She knows it can be passed from man to woman through sexual contact, and suspects this is how her husband caught the disease. He used to go away to drink at a bar in Lusaka, but sometimes would not come home to eat or go to work. He was good-looking, she says, but even if he hadn't been, there were women happy to sleep with a man with money. She suspects he passed the disease on to her but does not bear him any grudge: after all, he is dead, she says. Charles fell ill with the same symptoms. Margaret was struck by lightning, she says. Their partners are also dead. She took in the children, but fears they too may be infected. Ruth, 13, has TB; she coughs in the same way Margaret's husband coughed before he died. Kiliot, ten, wants to be a pilot. He remembers his father, Charles, a soldier. When Charles came home sick, Kiliot nursed him. He remembers looking into his father's eyes, and wondering why they were yellow. In village after village it is the same. Grandmothers nurse infants with no money to send them to school, and barely enough food to keep them alive. When grandmother dies, the children will be left with nothing. If they are lucky, a neighbour or relative might take them in, but their chances of an education will be gone. Some girls will run away to become prostitutes; some boys will move to the city to beg. And the dying goes on. Joyce Mwakabusha is 44 and will be lucky to survive much longer. The only question is whether she will outlive Precious, her two -year-old daughter who lies wrapped up on the dirt floor of the small hut that Joyce and her three children share. Joyce says her husband used to go away to catch fish. She thinks he had sex with other women while he was away. She never spoke to him about it: she had no control. He died two years ago, after bouts of diarrhoea, coughs and assorted pains. Now Joyce is sick too, and so is Precious. When Precious is suffering, she cries a lot. Even Joyce's family have turned their back on her. Her mother lives 100 yards away, but will not talk to the daughter she says has brought shame on her name. She is afraid of going near her daughter in case she too catches AIDS. She believes Joyce should eat alone and use her own pots and pans to prevent the disease spreading. Precious has fallen asleep in the warm shade inside Joyce's hut. There is little hope for her. She and Joyce need anti-retroviral drugs urgently, but there are none - and they could not pay anyway. Soon, the eagle will claim two more victims.
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