Nkosi Johnson

I didn't know yesterday was World Aids Day until I saw the red ribbon on the Google site (you always know what significant day it is from the Google site...) and then listening to NPR last night where Michele Norris was talking about Nkosi Jacobson. He's the little African boy who at the time of his death, was the longest surviving child with AIDS. He was somewhat of a crusader who not only rallied support to fight the epidemic but also fought for greater understanding of the disease and its victims. It was a sobering and profoundly moving hour, listeing not only to Jim Wooten talk about his book, We Are All the Same but more importanly, about the little boy who's at the center of it. You can hear audio clips of him speaking on the NPR site and his small voice speaks so much louder than all the celebrities and AIDS crusaders put together. Speaking to the 2000 International AIDS Conference, he said, “You can't get AIDS by hugging, kissing, holding hands. We are normal. We are human beings. We can walk, we can talk.... We have needs just like everyone else. We are all the same.” This is a dying 12 year-old African boy. I cried.

Ironically, in a world where we pride ourselves for having knowledge and information at the snap of our fingertips, one of the biggest things that stands in the way of battling AIDS is ignorance. Not just ignorance on the part of people who could be at risk, but Ignorance in general. We associate the disease with immorality, crime and lasviciousness, but does that somehow make the victims lesser beings? And what of victims like Nkosi, or the millions of people like him who contract the disease by no fault of their own?

I have no answer to how to battle AIDS, and I can't even say I know what to do to help. But the least we can all do is open our minds and hearts a little to understanding the reality of the epidemic, acknowledge that it is killing thousands of people everyday, and that no, it is not something that is happening in a place far away from you; it's everywhere. Please think of all the Nkosi Johnsons of the world today.