Violent memories flash through her mind; pain and anguish can be read across her face. She sits uncomfortably on a chair in a small lonely waiting room.
“I really don’t want to know,” she thinks to herself.
There is no one else to talk to, no one to comfort her now in her time of need.
“Today could change everything in my life,” she ponders. “I want to go home, I want to hold my baby “¦ no “¦ I don’t want to know.”
“Olivia,” the nurse says, “Your blood test results are in, please come with me.”
Olivia had been a victim of rape in a small yet recently made popular country in Africa called Malawi. Her perpetrator had AIDS and probably believed some variation of the myth that sex with a virgin would cure him of the disease. But no, he had given it to Olivia and now, according to World Health Organization statistics, she and her baby will become two of the nearly five million new cases of people infected with HIV this year.
More of this true story as well as two others can be heard through Impact1’s Tent Experience, which is currently touring locally. According to the tent producer and facilitator Lauren Alevy, 8,000 participants have already taken the 25-minute tour through the 20-by-60-foot tent and learned the story of someone in Africa affected by the AIDS pandemic.
Creating something that effectively demonstrated what it is like to walk in the shoes of those affected by AIDS was something that has lain heavy on Alevy’s heart since returning last June from a three-week stay in Africa.
“AIDS is the largest crisis of our time,” she said. “It’s ridiculous how many lives it takes.”
According to the World Health Organization and UNAID (Joint United Nations program on HIV/AIDS) 2005 AIDS epidemic update, approximately 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV last year while 3.1 million people died. These numbers show that each minute approximately six people die of AIDS, while nine are infected with HIV.
Seeing these staggering statistics firsthand prompted Alevy to begin thinking of the tent tour idea just two days after her return home from Africa. She described the mobile tent as “an awareness outreach of pediatric AIDS in Africa. It’s an audio/visual experience in which you step into the life of one of three children in Africa and learn the ways in which AIDS, poverty and hunger have affected them, their families and communities.”
Shanon Stous, tent worker, agreed that facts and figures alone do not seem to drive the problem home.
“You can hear about the problem, but in order to actually see what’s going on it helps to actually see what their houses look like,” Stous said. You get to actually pick up an AK-47 in one of their stories.”
Participants who tour the tent exhibit seem to have been affected by their experience.
“People leave messages of hope that will actually get back to those in Africa,” Stous said. Alevy also documented that more than 120 Malawian children were selected to be sponsored after the Tent Experience visited UCSD Oct. 30 through Nov. 4.
Alevy hopes that the tent will not only educate those who travel through it about the problem of AIDS and HIV in Africa, but that it will also inspire them to do something about it.
“It’s a humanitarian crisis,” Alevy said. “We can make a difference, we can make an impact, if each person impacts at least one person.”
The next stop will be Nov. 26 through 29 at La Jolla Presbyterian Church, 7715 Draper Ave., and then on to the University of San Diego Dec. 4 through 8. More information can be found at www.actingonaids.org/impact1.