Many of my colleagues are at the big HIV/AIDS conference in Washington. Every morning I receive a lot of blog posts in my mail box. Everyone is blogging like crazy. In my mind I imagine the end of the day’s session and everyone running off with their laptops and Pads to blog about what they learned/heard today; only a few bewildered souls standing around wanting to just talk. Ha!
It is good that the conference reports are upbeat because we need upbeatness. I attended a brown bag lunch presentations yesterday. A colleague from Lesotho with whom I have worked earlier in the spring talked about the work we are doing there with orphans and vulnerable children. The work is good and important but also a drop on a hot plate. The numbers of HIV infections among young women is staggering and the number of children left vulnerable to abuse (both physical and socially as they are being cheated out of inheritances) is frightful. Especially if you consider that in about 30 years’ time these children will be governing the country. It brings images from futuristic doomsday movies to mind.
The contrast with my life is beyond description but I will try nevertheless:
I drive home in a car I own that is in good shape because I have money to maintain it. The roads are in fairly good shape and the government has ordered maintenance work on the Tobin Bridge. It creates two daily traffic jams, in and out of Boston, but I can count on the bridge not collapsing under me one day. I arrive at my beautiful home, inherited from my in-laws, that is situated right next to the ocean and has a small beach that we have mostly to ourselves.
I have a loving husband of more than 30 years, two grown up kids who have work (and cars, and one of them a home) and found good mates. I have one healthy grand child who would not have survived the ordeal of birth if he had lived in the mountains of Lesotho, his mom might not have either.
We pour ourselves some drinks and wander down to the beach where we are the only people. We sit by the water’s edge and talk. We decide it is a good time for a pre-dinner swim and change in our bathing suits; we go back to the beach and discover the water is icy cold. We stand around for a while and then sit down again at the water’s edge and talk some more. Then it is time for dinner, a collaborative efforts (Axel picked the menu and did the shopping, picked the chard out of our garden and I assembled the feta-tomato-pita pizzas). We take our plates outside, pour ourselves a glass of cold white wine and eat while we look at the glistening cove and the flowers that surround us. We talk some more. A few chores later it is time for bed. All is well. I wanted to say ‘we are blessed,’ but that presumes that we deserve to be blessed. But what about all these orphans in Lesotho and their predators?
Sylvia's Journal 
0 Responses to “Privilege and predators”