28 Stories of Aids in Africa
Stephanie Nolen
"I am very concerned about the AIDS epidemic. At times I wonder why is anyone talking about anything else.
The book is about the title, 28; the author is a journalist, Stephanie Nolan, and she is a journalist from the Toronto Globe and Mail. She's worked in Africa for years writing about the AIDS epidemic, and she approached her publishers to write a book 28. Why 28? Because there are 28 million HIV infected people in Africa and she writes one story - one personal story for each million. She covers - but she covers from east to west, from Nigeria to Ethiopia, and south to South Africa with very, very, very intense stories. It's impossible not to feel the suffering of these people.
As you read through this, you find people who are very strong and courageous. One of them is a high school teacher who is a refugee from Burundi in a refugee camp, and he and his wife; and his infant daughter dies. He ends up being tested for HIV because he wants to give blood for someone who needs a transfusion; he finds out he's HIV positive. His wife is tested; she is HIV positive. They fled Burundi after she was raped by five or six soldiers, and they have no idea which one of them was positive first, but this is what they have to live with. They don't know when it happened to her, when it happened to him.
There's an enormous amount of information about how people are behaving, both good and bad. It's not an easy book to read, but it is a mat - it's a very informative, very strong work of journalism. Five. Definitely five."
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