MOZAMBIQUE: "I am in the darkness" - AIDS orphan

Photo: Alfredo Mueche/IRIN

Custodio Julio, 16, and his sister Edita, 5. Every day is a scramble for food

TETE, 15 March 2007 (PlusNews) - Laurita Fernando's father left her just two mud huts and a badly tended maize field when he died. Once he was gone - after two months of suffering from AIDS-related symptoms - Laurita's stepmother walked out of the family home.

Laurita, 14, and her sister, Sofia, 11, live in a rural community, in the Chiuta district of Tete Province in northwestern Mozambique.

HIV prevalence in the province is 17 percent, so AIDS has made its presence felt here. Free antiretroviral (ARV) therapy began in Tete last year, but HIV testing facilities opened in Chiuta just two months ago. Lack of awareness means stigma is a huge problem. The extended family has traditionally stepped in to help when kin hit hard times, but fear of AIDS has introduced a new arms-length approach by some relatives.

"I worked a lot with children traumatised by war," said Maria dos Anjos Fabiao Borges, the Mozambique Red Cross's lead HIV/AIDS officer in Tete. "We reintegrated them with family members and foster parents. But this is something else, this is discrimination."

Heading a household is hard

The Fernando children have been largely abandoned by their relatives: instead of help, one uncle sent seven young cousins to live with the girls so they could be closer to the school they attended. He provides his children with food, but not Laurita and Sofia.

A child orphaned by AIDS has already weathered the sickness and then death of one or both parents, and may become the primary caregiver if the remaining parent also falls ill, as well as the effective guardian of any siblings.

Even with forewarning, dying parents often neglect to make provision for their children. In many cases, parents are too ill and weak to work their fields and food stocks fall short.

The mother of Custodio Julio, 16, died last July, after just two weeks of acute sickness. Not long afterwards he found his father collapsed in their maize field. Custodio became responsible for the care of three younger siblings.

Before worrying about their wellbeing, he had to pay for his father's funeral. He sold the tin panels from the roof of his hut and borrowed money from friends. To pay the debts incurred by the funeral, he sold some of the family's maize reserve; by January, his store was exhausted. "Some friends help, but not always," he said.

For Custodio and other children heading households, every day is a new scramble for food. They may sell off their goats - often their only assets - for maize, the staple food; they may work day-jobs, which take them out of school; they may forage in the forest for greens and limit their meals to one per day.

In September 2006, the Mozambique Red Cross initiated a programme in Tete to help vulnerable children by supplying families stricken by AIDS with basic items, such as maizemeal, cooking oil and soap. Red Cross volunteers, chosen by community leaders, visit the children to help them cope with the emotional stress of a parent's death and the practical realities of living without their mother or father, or both.

Only 1,400 children, including Custodio, are registered in the programme so far, but a lack of funding means only 400 children are actually receiving supplies. Custodio is not yet one of them.

No future plans

Alberto Silva Chassata was 16 when his father died, but he was able to stay in school. When he lost his mother in November 2006 he was 19, but he also lost his future because he was needed at home to care for his four younger brothers and sisters. His aunts and uncles did not answer his appeals for help.

Alberto was in tenth grade at a school about 100km from home when he heard the news of his mother's death. Few students in Tete reach this level, and Alberto had hopes of going further. Now it is his job to keep his younger brothers and sisters in school, and fed. Three of them are being schooled elsewhere, and he regularly sends them food.

Like most other AIDS orphans, and the rest of the community in the area where he lives, Alberto has not been tested for HIV and neither have his siblings. "Sure they should," he acknowledged, but it costs US$2 per person to take the bus to the health center and back.

Perhaps he thinks knowing would not make a difference in his life. "I am in the darkness," he said. "I am alone."

dm/oa/he