BillyCalderwood.com

Four years ago, Daniel’s and Dhumsile’s parents succumbed to a long illness. No one in the community will talk about how they died. They had 7 children. Now the oldest girl, Dhumsile, age 17, has left school to seek work in Nhlangano so that she can provide for her 6 younger siblings. Unfortunately, she has not been able to find work. The village elders know that she will eventually prostitute herself to find money to send home to her younger siblings so they can survive. Dhumsile knows that she may very well contract HIV/AIDS, but will choose prostitution because she knows that she and her siblings will die of hunger and malnutrition long before AIDS will take them. At the homestead, Daniel goes out every evening to knock on the neighbors’ doors to see if they might spare some food for him and his 5 younger brothers and sisters. Sometimes they give him food, sometimes they have nothing. On the nights he receives no food, he hates to return home, because he is too embarrassed to face his young brothers and sisters who depend on him to bring something home. Now they face another night hungry. They go to their beds in pain, crying, because they don’t know where their next meal will come from, or if it will come.