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Depicting hard truth of AIDS
Albany (NY) Times Union
By PAUL GRONDAHL , Staff writer
03.10.01
Quilt from South Africa, which recalls tremendous loss of life
to epidemic, comes to Albany
With simple art supplies and stark wording, a quilt from South
Africa with 3-foot-by-6-foot squares, roughly the size of coffins,
describes the staggering destruction of the AIDS epidemic.
On one panel, a father, mother and child -- an entire family --
is recalled in plain lettering. It reads: "Joe 1965-1998. Joice
1968- 1996. Dudu 1996-1997.''
A panel for Mthokolis Ngubane says: "He was from a rich family
and he was a handsome boy with many girlfriends.'' He died at age
26.
Another commemorates the life of Shangile Gamede. Born 1960. Died
1997. "She was a domestic. She was quite beautiful,'' the text
says above a piece of a yellow gingham dress. Gamede left behind
a 6-year- old son, Mugi.
"There's no sugar coating, no dancing around that this is
a disease that kills,'' said Stephen O'Neill, president of the local
chapter of the NAMES Project that brought the AIDS quilt from South
Africa to Albany to coincide with The [Black Church Week of Prayer
for the Healing of] AIDS.
The South African AIDS quilt came to the United States in the fall,
was shown at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta
and is now touring different parts of the country in conjunction
with the NAMES Project. O'Neill said it differs from the American
AIDS quilt in its powerful and plain depictions of the devastation
of AIDS.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 25.3 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS,
55 percent of whom are women. Worldwide, 3 million people died of
AIDS last year, 80 percent of whom lived in Africa, the continent
worst-hit by the disease, according to the World Health Organization.
Because of AIDS, life expectancy in South Africa will be age 36
by 2010. Without the disease, it would have been 70. Health experts
call it "a mortality avalanche.'' Nearly 1 in 10 adults in
Africa today is infected with AIDS.
"This just stabs you,'' said the Rev. Jill Farnham, looking
at the South African AIDS quilt on display at Upper Hudson Planned
Parenthood in Albany recently. "This is as powerful and moving
as the experience I had seeing the AIDS quilt for the first time
in 1985.''
Farnham, co-pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of the Hudson
Valley in Albany, displayed part of the quilt at The Eddy Visiting
Nurse Association in Troy, where she works.
On Sunday, the South African AIDS quilt can be viewed during services
at two Albany churches: Israel AME Church, 381 Hamilton St. (463-8779)
and Emmanuel Baptist Church, 275 State St. (465-5161). Call for
times and information.
Copyright 2001, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation,
Albany, N.Y. The information you receive online from Times Union
is protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The copyright
laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing
of any copyright-protected material.
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