Dear friends,
A new book has just come out here. It's called "Our Stories, Our Songs: African Children Talk about AIDS" by Deborah Ellis.
In this book Stephen Lewis, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa is quoted. For years I followed the career of his father,
the excellent David Lewis, and Stephen is his father's son. Stephen Lewis is a
Canadian, and a very able and caring man who serves capably and sacrificially where his ideals lead.
Stephen Lewis says that he doesn't believe that "the world yet fully appreciates
the accelerating and monumental nature of the catastrophe, that what's happening in Africa now may be a harbinger of what is going to happen in South Asia."
"If," he continues, "China and India are hit in a similar way, and end up with millions of people between fifteen and forty-nine getting infected with and then
dying of AIDS, then we're talking about not just tens of millions, but hundreds
of millions of people. How the devil do you deal with it?"
Please, my very dear friends, do your absolute best not to ever have sex outside
of marriage. Be faithful in your marriages. If you have any suspicion that your sex partner, married to you or not, may not be completely faithful, or may have had sex with somebody else during the AIDS period, use a condom. Agree together before marriage and intimate sex that both of you will be tested for AIDS and then when your tests are clear you will be faithful to each other. Ifyou do this you will be safe. If you don't, you won't. It's as simple as that!
If you are going to get married or live together, or have any kind of sex with each other, be sure to use a protection. Girls and women must insist on use of a
condom because they are very vulnerable, more so than men. Although most areinfected by men who have been with women who sleep around, or are prostitutes.
Remember, if you survive this it will be the very best thing in the world that
could happen for you, your family, your children, your country, and the world.
Many are going to die. Unfortunately it's just as simple as that. How can spread be avoided in this world of such widespread travel?
On the exciting whim of a moment don't get carried away and have sex with anybody. Keep control of yourselves and don't have it man to man, or man to woman, and don't have it in any of the usual or less usual ways, because any tiny opening
in your mucous membranes, wherever they are, can let the virus into your body.
DON'T EVER FORGET THIS!
With my deep affection and caring, and with my very best hopes for your brilliant futures, I hope you escape death my dear friends. And please, don't think this is overblown concern, because it IS NOT!
Mary
