The Westover Church on Muir’s Chapel road recently hosted a World Vision presentation of their Step Into Africa program. Running from Sept. 4 through Sept. 8, the program aimed to raise awareness about the constant specter of AIDS and its daily visitations on the lives of African families. With a firm message of hope through faith, the exhibit invited visitors to experience the struggles and perils of life in nations such as Uganda, Kenya and Lesotho, the epicenters of the AIDS epidemic.

Upon entering the behemoth of a church, I quickly found my way to the exhibit, where volunteers assisted me in procuring a headset for the audio experience. I was greeted by the wise, slightly echoing voice of Halima, my guide, who invited me to “step out of my world” and into “the pulse of Africa.”

Directed by mystical drumming and chanting, I stepped through a curtain and into the life of Mathabo, a six-year-old girl living in Lesotho, an enclave nation within South Africa where one in four adults are living with HIV or AIDS.

Mathabo suffers the dire fate of many Africans. In addition to widespread poverty, 12 million children have lost one or both parents to AIDS, and in Lesotho alone, 56,000 children have been rendered orphans by the epidemic.

Her father, wayward since her birth, has died, “most likely of AIDS.” She suffers hunger and deprivation; her house is little more than a squalid hut. Her mother has disappeared in search of work, seemingly never to return.

The plight of children such as Mathabo, especially girls, includes not only the typical bouts of hunger and disease, but also the constant threat of intruding thieves and nomadic rapists. In “child-headed households” such as hers, children are often forced to drop out of school to find food for themselves, or even engage in “survival sex” for food or money.

This brutal reality is vividly illustrated by a frenzied symphony streaming through the headphones. A child wails in terror as the flimsy walls of a hut are splintered by kicks, battered and broken down by an intruding thief. This is a consequence of the rampant abandonment of children and Lesotho’s abject poverty: one in three people live on less than a dollar a day.

Luckily, Mathabo escapes such a predicament. She is taken in by a World Vision volunteer named Ma Nyane. World Vision Portrays Ma Nyane as an almost messianic character, delivering Mathabo from the horrors of her life in whatever degree she can, providing food, faith, shelter and schooling. Above all, World Vision represents her role as a source of “hope and healing” for African communities torn by poverty and AIDS.

At age eleven, Mathabo’s mother returns, but soon falls ill. The audio player recreates the painful shuddering and gasping of her dying mother with a stark, unsettling misery.

To exacerbate her plight, Mathabo must face the prospect of having caught HIV herself from washing her mother’s open sores. Ma Nyane encourages her to get tested at the local clinic, a rather terrifying place full of coughing, shuffling people and wailing babies. Luckily, she tests negative, but countless others are not so fortunate.

As I finished walking Mathabo’s path, her tragedy began to really take hold. The emergency exits throughout seemed to highlight the disparity between the relative security of my life and the horror of hers. In villages such as hers, every day is an emergency; a steady, resigned struggle against seemingly insurmountable catastrophes.

A prayer wall at the end of the path is full of handwritten notes of encouragement and invocation. One promises “You Are Not Forgotten,” and yet it’s still hard to imagine that that’s true of a place where people find prosperity in making coffins.

In light of these difficulties, World Vision is making important efforts towards a resolution of the crisis. They not only organize the efforts of volunteers like Ma Nyane but also distribute medical kits so that people with HIV or AIDS can be cared for more safely and effectively.

World Vision sponsors over 100 million people in 100 countries, focusing in the areas of community development and emergency relief. Jeanine Herrick, communications manager of the exhibit, stressed that World Vision’s mission was to “provide a fullness of life for people through tackling poverty and injustice.”

For students, this can mean a summer internship arranged through www.worldvision.org, sponsoring a child, or simply raising awareness through student-run organizations like the Community AIDS Awareness Program. If you’re interested in CAAP you can email them for more information at [email protected].