Children at a Lusaka, Zambia, elementary school
do schoolwork in the absence of their teacher.
More than 1 million African children lost their
teacher to AIDS last year, according to UNAIDS.
LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) -- Almost
every hand in the sun-washed classroom at Kaplunga Girls High
School shoots up in stark answer to a simple question: How many of
you have lost a teacher to AIDS?
One lost a religion teacher. Another recalls a geography
teacher who was especially nice. Others sigh about the civics
teacher who died just before exam week.
As AIDS spreads across Africa, it cuts a path of devastation
through every aspect of society. It crushes economies, leaves
millions of children orphans and casts a cloud over the
continent's future by killing its teachers.
More than 1 million African children lost a teacher to AIDS
last year, according to UNAIDS, the U.N. program set up to fight
the disease.
Some remote schools with only one teacher have been forced to
close. In others, class sizes have surged, and underqualified,
hastily trained substitute teachers have struggled to ensure
students get some sort of education.
And in countries like Zambia, where one-fifth of the adults are
thought to be infected with HIV, the disease is killing teachers
at a rate too fast to be replaced, authorities say.
Losing leaders
Kenneth Ofusu-Barko, a UNAIDS adviser in Zambia, says the loss
of teachers is felt far beyond the classroom.
Teachers "tend to be community leaders, so when they are
gone they create a vacuum ... communities tend to lose their
cohesion and there is an element of hopelessness," he said.
HIV-positive teacher Delphia Akafumba Mwanagala,
second from left, and her three sons pose in
their two-room home in Lusaka, Zambia.
In the capital, Lusaka, music teacher Remmy Mukonka helped
found the Anti-AIDS Teachers Association of Zambia after watching
many of his close colleagues die.
Mukonka, 31, and colleagues provide information about
counseling, testing and AIDS drugs to teachers. But most of all
they try to fight the stigma surrounding AIDS that makes it so
difficult to talk about the disease, let alone tackle it.
Teachers say that as public figures, they find it even more
challenging to discuss their condition.
At a meeting of teachers at a Lusaka elementary school, those
used to standing at the blackboard take seats behind rickety
wooden desks and speak about the disease that is decimating their
ranks and making quality teaching all but impossible.
Every day someone is absent because of illness and can't be
replaced, said Monica Chibuye, 29. "We try to distribute kids
to different classes but they are already overloaded."
Some classes spill over with as many as 100 students. Teachers
cover only part of the curriculum and struggle to keep up with
grading students and monitoring their progress. They also must
cope with new challenges of teaching in the AIDS age, such as
dealing with orphaned students.
Income and insurance
With low salaries and no health insurance, HIV-positive
teachers feel doomed.
If they retire for health reasons, their pensions will not go
into effect for about four years, by which time they could be
dead, they say.
In the front row of the classroom is Delphia Akafumba Mwanagala,
a 43-year-old elementary school teacher. She is HIV-positive and
has a hacking cough from tuberculosis.
"When you get sick, you waste away," said Mwanagala.
We
are losing the
people who are
educating us.
What are we
going to do?
-- Andrew
Mwape,
18-year-old
student
One of Lusaka's few teachers to openly declare herself
HIV-positive, Mwanagala said she was infected by her husband, a
retired soldier. He died four years ago and his family took over
the family home and all their possessions.
Now Mwanagala and her three sons, ages 9, 13 and 19, live in a
two-room cinderblock shack at the end of a dirt path in Lusaka.
There is no electricity, but the door is cracked open to admit a
beam of sunlight.
Gaunt and exhausted, skin drawn tightly against high
cheekbones, Mwanagala doubts she will have the strength to return
to teaching when her three-month sick leave ends. She has no money
for doctors and the dusty air worsens her cough.
Her $50 monthly salary isn't enough to live on after paying
school fees, rent, transportation and food.
So she pounds aloe vera leaves to prepare something to ease her
coughing, and writes notes to her fellow teachers asking for help.
"But unfortunately they also have very little
salaries," she says.
Too many funerals
At Kaplunga Girls High School, girls in the schoolyard
laughingly call the school by its nickname, ABC -- AIDS Breeding
Center. And they talk about the disruption and sadness of having
six teachers die the past two years.
Students at Kaplunga Girls High School in
Lusaka, talk about how their teachers died of
AIDS in Lusaka, Zambia.
School administrators said classes were canceled for teacher
funerals in the past. But no longer. There are too many funerals.
At one of the school's AIDS clubs, students from the
neighboring boys' school join in for meetings about safer sex and
reaching out to the sick.
They exchange memories of friends and teachers who have died
and are more outspoken about the disease than many adults are.
"We are losing the people who are educating us," says
Andrew Mwape, 18. "What are we going to do?"
We
are losing the
people who are
educating us.
What are we
going to do?
