Urchins of A.i.d.s.

As the HIV AIDS epidemic tightens its grip on South Africa, city streets and parks have become host to a “Lost Generation” of homeless orphans. Many have inherited the virus from sick mothers and will die before the age of seven while obese “Gravy-train” government ministers continue to play down this humanitarian tragedy. I watched two grubby waifs with bare scraped knees on garbage littered mounds of broken stone. They clambered dumps with prickly scrub, a copse of wattle trees to a cardboard box of rags that served as home. Then scampered shoeless down the squalid streets, to trawl those busy sidewalks stalls and bars. A hopeful morsel for the day was gleaned by charm or cheats while their laughing feet splashed mud on shops and cars. As starlight dropped its chilling veil of dew, an urchin gazed up to a savage sky. His sister dying in his arms with a song his mom once knew, this boy-child rocked a weeping lullaby. Each night two skinny wraiths return to scramble through my brain and a little girl runs laughing in the rain.