Grandmothers keep AIDS on the public radar
July 22, 2010
Vancouver Sun, by Sheley Fralic
In a week when AIDS is back on the Canadian radar, where it has been missing in action for some time, Jean Way can see some hope.
She sees hope in the latest news, the good, out of the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, which on Sunday announced the positive results of a study by Vancouver researchers working with HAART, a "highly activated anti-retroviral therapy."
She sees hope, too, even in the bad, in the public spanking Monday from the HIV/AIDS community in Canada, which gave our country an F on its AIDS report card for failing to recognize the needs of women and girls fighting the rising rate of infection.
Good or bad, new developments on the AIDS front trump indifference, which for Way has been something of an unsettling reality since she lost her 35-year-old stepson Ted to AIDS in 1990, and then his partner Don, four weeks later.
Back then, the now-retired Richmond schoolteacher recalls, the high death rate from AIDS in Vancouver was much in the news, but as years went by, medical advancements meant fewer Canadians were dying of AIDS, which was a blessing, but as the crisis migrated to the Third World, suddenly no one was talking much about it any more.
But it's been on Way's unwavering radar these past 20 years, and after the death of Ted, whom she raised from the age of 14 along with her other stepchildren, she says, "I knew right away I wanted to do something to help around the AIDS issue."
In 2006, she discovered the freshly minted Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign, part of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, and launched a local chapter called the Richmond Gogos, a clutch of like-minded materfamilias who raise money and awareness, and mobilize support, to fight the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
Ask for statistics and she reels them off: More than 10 million sub-Saharan children have been orphaned by AIDS and are being raised, mostly, by their grandmothers, who often have AIDS themselves and scramble to provide food, money and essential medicine, such as anti-viral drugs, for their impoverished families.
In South Africa alone, close to six million people are HIV positive, while only 300,000 of those have access to anti-virals. Swaziland, the tiny landlocked country in southern Africa that she recently visited, has the highest AIDS infection rate in the world, and experts have predicted that the epidemic among the million-plus population has put the country's existence in peril.
So Way, who is 63 and has eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, joined 41 other Canadian grandmothers, all members of local Gogo chapters, and flew on donated air miles to take part in a three-day conference in Manzini, Swaziland, last May. There were workshops and speeches and celebrations and, on the last day, a rally that attracted 1,500 marching African grandmothers, many travelling in from rural areas.
Today, there are 300 Grandmothers to Grandmothers projects operating in 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and they take requests directly from local grandmothers who are seeking help, ranging from money to buy seeds so they can grow food and sell produce at the market, to grief counselling and school fees and micro-business startups.
To date, about $9 million has been raised through Canadian Gogo chapters like Way's, one of 240 in the country totalling more than 5,000 members, and while fundraising is one of the main goals -the projects get up to 200 proposals a month -the other is to keep AIDS on the radar.
"Some of the grandmothers are HIV positive and are looking after grandchildren who are HIV positive. They have lost their own children to AIDS, and it's not uncommon for them to be looking after many grandchildren by themselves -I know of one who has 15 grandchildren, because her husband had two wives -and she's old and she cooks outside and she has to learn how to earn money."
And, says Way, Swaziland grandmothers only receive the equivalent of about $30 a month in pension money, so the projects are vital: "They're getting strong together because the projects have developed a lot of support groups, and they are training them."
So strong, that several "Afri-Gran Caravans," led by African grandmothers and their granddaughters, will travel throughout Canada later this fall, visiting 36 communities, including the Vancouver area in early November, their goal being to keep the intergenerational dialogue going.
Way's grandchildren are adults now, but her great-grandchildren are youngsters, and are slowly learning of their great-grandmom's dedication to the AIDS fight.
Earlier this week, her three-and five-year-old great-grandchildren were stopping over for a visit, and she was going to surprise them with the gift of some African dolls she brought back from Swaziland.
And perhaps offer up a little lesson in advocacy, just to keep the cause all in the family.