Its in his eyes!

The reality of an epidemic that is devastating our continent was starkly brought home to me yesterday, when I saw our gardener for the first time since he was diagnosed with HIV. It took me a minute to recover my composure as I looked at his hollow face and "dead" eyes. Here is a man who has a death sentence on his head, and yet is remarkably cheerful in the face of it all.

When Simon started working for us a few years back, he was a healthy, cheerful and extremely hard working fellow. Little by little though, we noticed that he seemed to be losing weight and was always having coughing fits (an apparent sign of TB). We figured that it was the stress of looking after his mother who had a stroke and couldn't move around too well as well as his brother who has full blown AIDS. Simon has a lot on his shoulders for someone so young, and yet, he never complained - always whistling while he worked.

Towards the end of last year, he really started to deteriorate and it was clear he couldn't work anymore. We were devastated as we thought of him slowly being claimed by that dreadful disease. Yet, he hung on and after months of treatment and rest, he is on the road to some sort of recovery.

His eyes though tell the story - dark, haunted and dead and I just hope he can keep on fighting!!