I admit, I didn't go to Africa to study AIDS. I went for more self-serving reasons, mainly I wanted to climb Kilimanjaro. I had thought, naively as it turned out, that you could travel down along the Nile from Cairo to Lake Victoria. As it turned out, you'd be mad to try that, bandits are everywhere in Southern Sudan and Uganda, a White Guy would never make it. This was before "The Internet", you couldn't do any advance research. So I made a detour at Khartoum and traveled east, then south. It was a cool trip, but one morning, over breakfast in a little Hotel called "The People's Palace" in Asmar'a, Eritrea, I came across some journalists who were filming in East Africa, and got invited to visit a refugee camp with them. Big mistake. The worst experience of my life seeing all these little babies sick, crying, starving, nothing you or anybody else could do for them. Vultures hopping around inside the compounds. Preists administering Last Rites. I'll never forget that the little girls wore these steel Neck Rings, some kind of Tribal Jewelry. A sign that, at some point in their short lives, somebody had cared agreat deal for them. Like a dolt, I asked, "What happened to their parents?" AIDS. I dreamt about that camp or months after getting back to Samoa. I have far more vivid memories of that camp than I do of the trip up Kili.
So. No AIDS in Africa? Big American Conspiracy? I beg to differ.
