Helping unsung heroes

JEANIE KEOGH

Vancouver students from three area secondary schools gathered at King David High School on Nov. 5 to witness firsthand a humanitarian call-and-response mission that has been instrumental in raising nearly six million dollars to help AIDS-affected sub-Saharan Africans.

The call came in the form of African grandmothers who, after caring for too many orphaned children, cried out, “We will no longer raise our grandchildren for the grave,” said Alexis MacDonald, director of external relations for the Stephen Lewis Foundation, an organization that has funded community-based AIDS organizations in 15 African countries since 2003. The response to that call, she continued, came from Canadian grandmothers, who collectively said, “We will not rest until you can rest.”

The result is the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign that started with a half dozen Canadian grandmother groups in 2006 and has grown to 240 groups today, with more than 20 in southwestern British Columbia. Grandmothers to Grandmothers is now leading a cross-country AfriGrand Caravan tour, bringing one grandmother and one granddaughter from Swaziland to tell their stories to 40 communities across Canada .

Thandeka Carol Motsa, 19, faced the students at KDHS, many of whom are just a few years her junior, and spoke about losing her mother to AIDS when she was 14 and then going on to care for her three siblings, dropping out of school because she couldn’t afford the fees.

“I was [the] one who had to leave school and take care of her while she was hospitalized,” she said in Zulu, with the help of a translator. “There were no anti-viral drugs at that time. I had to invent a way in order for my mother to have drinks because she was unable to drink by herself.”

It is Motsa’s wish, she said, to finish high school, so that she can help other orphans, help her brothers grow up and to have her own home and shelter. This is a difficult task, however, since Swaziland Positive Living, the organization that helps provide her with food and pays her school fees, bus fare and for her younger siblings’ school uniforms, doesn’t currently extend to girls her age. SWAPOL is one of the AIDS organizations receiving financial support from the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Grandmother Tsabile Victoria Simelane recounted her own experience, illustrating that aid to countries in need can be effective. For example, she said, partnering with SWAPOL allowed her to look after 30 orphans and six grandchildren, two of whom are HIV positive, in a community that suffers from 98 percent unemployment.

“The G8 said we are wasting funds in Africa. Let the G8 continue to support Africa because we are seeing the change. We are witnesses here to testify. It’s not the case that we are fighting a losing battle,” Simelane said.

The AfriGrand Caravan tour began in Newfoundland just after Labor Day and is challenging schools to join the nation-wide A Dare to Remember fundraising campaign. Participants choose an individual or collective “dare” and get people to put money towards seeing the dare carried out.

In his address to the students, KDHS’s Rabbi Daniel Siegal related the heroic acts of Simelane to Judaism through the passage in the Torah that refers to Bithya, who adopted Moses even though he was not her son. Siegal called Simelane a present-day Bithya, who, “like an African princess long ago, strives to give renewed life to a threatened people.

“Last year, when J.J. Keki of the Abayudaya community of Uganda visited us at KDHS, we were amazed to hear he had 22 children,” Siegel told the Independent. “Our amazement was soon coupled with dismay when we learnt that most of his children were adopted orphans whose parents died of AIDS.

“Moved by the message of Tsabile and Thandeka, our KDHS students have responded by assuming personal Dare enterprises to raise funds to combat AIDS in Africa, joining together to fulfil the commandment, ‘Do not stand upon the blood of your fellow human being,’” Siegel said.

The Dare campaign lasts until World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. Communities can also start their own Grandmothers to Grandmothers chapters or host events to raise awareness of the pandemic. For more information, visit stephenlewisfoundation.org.

Jeanie Keogh is a Vancouver freelance writer.

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