Our fifth day in the country and we are still working on familiarizing ourselves with the local organizations and individuals who are actively fighting the battle against the AIDS epidemic, on everything from a community, to an international level. Yesterday we interviewed Ntando Yola, Community Liaison and Education Officer for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. He became involved after he worked as a school-teacher and was confronted with students dropping out of school, either to care for relatives with AIDS, or because they were infected themselves. Now he works with youth groups in several communities and runs clinical trials to test for an HIV vaccine. He spoke about the discrepancies that he encounters on a regular basis between knowledge about HIV/AIDS versus attitudes and practice. Ntando kindly offered to bring us into some of the townships next week to meet some of the negative cohort adolescence that he works with, and we are very excited about the opportunity to meet some of the young people who are involved on such a personal level.

Another extremely knowledgeable person that we have had the opportunity to speak with is Stacie Stender, who has worked for Columbia University’s International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs, (ICAP) as a clinical advisor, and for the Presidents’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, (PEPFAR.) We learned a lot from Stacie about the community of AIDS educators and health providers in South Africa, and she also shared with us her experiences of working for PEPFAR, telling us that approximately a quarter of the funds allocated for PEPFAR go just to South Africa. A mind-boggling figure, that at the very least, points to devastating effect that AIDS has had on the country.

These past few days we have really been focusing on learning about the many issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in South Africa in every way that we can: from reading the newspaper every morning to talking to all of the locals that we meet. And of course, filming it all on the way.