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Easter Semya carries a heavy burden. Despite living with HIV/AIDS herself, she is responsible for caring for her ill mother and daughter. She has already lost six other family members and her husband through HIV/AIDS.

Personal tragedies usually evoke sympathy from neighbours. However, in the area of rural Zambia where Easter lives, fear of HIV/AIDS is so strong that her family have been declared 'cursed'.

 

Shunned by the village, they now stay in a secluded area where tall grass hides their hut from the villagers. Easter is too weak to tend her land any more, and to do so would mean returning to the main village and facing her former neighbours.

Volunteers from Community Youth Mobilisation (CYM), a Methodist Relief and Development Fund local partner, are among the few people who still talk to Easter.

 

 

They encouraged her to take an HIV test at a clinic 20 kilometres' walk away but, although check-ups and drug treatment are available, she has not returned to the clinic – she can no longer walk such a long distance. CYM plans to arrange transport for her next visit and to collect medicine on her behalf in future.

 

CYM's actions are small in the face of great personal suffering, but they show Easter, and others afraid of revealing their HIV status, that there are people who still care about them.

 

CYM has a bigger vision as well: through education in schools, community meetings and door-to-door campaigns, it hopes to break through the stigma and ignorance surrounding HIV/AIDS, so that one day Easter, and others like her, can return home.