"the greatest challenge of our generation"

United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan gave a message in New York on December first. You can read the full text of the message by clicking here. Here are a few highlights:

"In the 25 years since the first case was reported, AIDS has changed the world. It has killed 25 million people, and infected 40 million more. It has become the world's leading cause of death among both women and men aged 15 to 59. It has inflicted the single greatest reversal in the history of human development. In other words, it has become the greatest challenge of our generation.

[Accountability] requires business leaders to work for HIV prevention in the workplace and in the wider community, and to care for affected workers and their families. It requires health workers, community leaders and faith-based groups to listen and care, without passing judgement. It requires fathers, husbands, sons and brothers to support and affirm the rights of women. It requires teachers to nurture the dreams and aspirations of girls. It requires men to help ensure that other men assume their responsibility--and understand that real manhood means protecting others from risk. And it requires every one of us to help bring AIDS out of the shadows, and spread the message that silence is death."

Nomafili, a strong and talented young woman, an orphan and one of our youth in Cape Town, wrote a powerful poem about her community's experience of AIDS:

Death

Our people are dying because of this death

we cry night and day for people we love

from the bottom of our heart

God bring dizaster to our earth maybe he knows

Those people cry for this dizaster by taking their people

The whole world cry for this

Some of houses no, no all the houses

Don't switch their light off because of this Death

Some can't close their eyes because they scared.

They are crying night and day

They never stop crying because of their love ones

Those tears falling on the ground until the soil is wet

That you can even get water to that soil and tears

The hearts are full of blood

Heart broken by this Death

Those children who don't have parents

They are living alone no is bringing them food

When the sun goes down

They become scared

They live in darkness

And they become scared and waiting for something

To happen to them because of this Death

Dizaster

Killer

Joke

Nonsense

The Death that no one can say I found it

And I will kill it

No one no, one can find it!!!!!

From Nomafili

Poem of Death

So often I think of our struggle against the viral destruction of AIDS in terms of a battle. And so I find the language of Isaiah 49:25 an encouraging promise: But the Lord says, "The captives of warriors will be released, and the plunder of tyrants will be retrieved. For I will fight those who [that which] fight[s] you, and I will save your children!"