>>FEATURE
STEPHANIE NOLEN
Tuesday, May 1
Glenbow Museum
For the past six years, award-winning journalist Stephanie Nolen has tracked AIDS across Africa, first traveling back and forth from Toronto and then, in 2003, finally convincing her editors at the Globe and Mail that the story was big enough to merit its own bureau. "I had just been in Afghanistan," she says, "and I had been in Iraq, and here were all of these things that were nominally the biggest story in the world. What was happening here was so much bigger on such a massive scale, and affecting so many more people. When I was in Baghdad or Kabul, I would be tripping over other reporters – it would be a fistfight to get the last generator or the last loaf of bread. Then I would come to Africa, and I would be the only reporter. The trip I did in 2002, I travelled through six countries in eight weeks – I never even saw another journalist. And I’m thinking, ‘There’s a very big story here, where is everybody?’"
Nolen’s new book, 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, does an admirable job of the near-impossible: it tells, it shows, it explains just how big the story really is. The book is named for the approximately 28 million people currently fighting AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a staggering number, of course, as are its corollaries: 5,500 of the infected die every day; 14 million children are parentless because of AIDS; 700,000 children are themselves born with the virus every year. And 90 per cent of the world’s 2.6 million children with HIV/AIDS are African.
Nolen is the first to admit that these numbers are overwhelming, even paralyzing. "I don’t fault people for clicking on the TV, seeing a documentary on the skinny babies, going ‘Oh, my God,’ and clicking it off again. I mean, that’s an entirely understandable reaction. I wanted to say, ‘These are not faceless millions, these are real people.’" To this end, she has chosen to tell the stories of 28 different people, one for each of the 28 million infected. A photographic portrait accompanies each powerful, detailed story. I guarantee that these words, actions, and faces will remain etched in your mind long after you put down this book.
Nolen says she had little difficulty getting people to tell her their stories. "I think in a weird way, it’s easier to talk about HIV with a stranger," she says. "I’m not from there, I’m not going to bring certain judgments or expectations to the conversation. And with some people I sensed even a kind of weird giddiness around it. We all like to talk about ourselves on some level, right? But they don’t get to talk about life with HIV, and that means talking about the shame and the fear. But it also means, ‘And then I started these drugs, and they gave me the neuropathy in my feet, and I took these other drugs and got spots’ – you know, there’s not a lot of people in your life who are really interested in that. And there I am sitting on the end of the couch going, ‘Really? Then what happened?’"
But the "story" of AIDS in Africa is far more than just biography, or even the chronicle of an infection. Nolen deftly situates each of these stories within its larger context. As she writes in 28’s introduction, "Their stories explain how the disease works, how it spreads and how it kills. They explain how AIDS is horribly, inextricably tied to conflict, famine and the collapse of states. They explain how treatment works, when people can get it, and how the people who can’t get it fight to stay alive with virtually no help and no support." This – the lack of access to treatment and prevention – is perhaps the most infuriating thread in the book. In the words of Gideon Byamugisha, a Ugandan Anglican priest living openly with the virus, "HIV is not like cancer. We know what works. We can defeat AIDS if we do the right things. And we know what those are."
Nolen points out, though, the danger of talking about "Africa as if it were one place, one country, one homogeneous story." Out of 28 million people in 53 countries, then, how did she choose 28? "I literally sat down with a yellow legal pad and said, ‘If I was going to sit with somebody and have a long conversation about all the things you need to know to understand how Africa got here, the epidemiology and the social, cultural, religious, political and all of those things, whose lives would you need to know about?’ You’d need a trucker, you’d need a kid, you’d need a health-care worker, you would need a member of the clergy. So then I had categories, and I went looking for the actual people."
Then there are the activists, themselves working to alleviate the toll of AIDS on their countries, all the while living with HIV themselves. "I’d go away on these horribly depressing trips and I’d come home and my partner would notice that I was quite energized and excited. And he’d say, ‘You know, it’s because of these people. It’s because of Siphiwe, it’s because of Winstone, and Ida – people that you get to spend time with that are doing these extraordinary things.’"
In fact, reading 28, perhaps surprisingly, has the same kind of energizing effect. It is ultimately a book about people living with AIDS, not simply dying from it. "I don’t think I was deliberately trying to write a book that was upbeat," she says. "It’s just that I wrote a book that said what was actually happening. And what’s happening is horrendous, tragic and awful. It’s also, at the same time, powerful, courageous and inspiring. People who have nothing manage to take care of each other and fight these battles with incredible self-respect and dignity."
Also energizing is the book’s success in making us feel that we can be part of the solution. Again, this might run contrary to expectation: Nolen does not advocate giving up your job and jetting off to join a sub-Saharan clinic. "I have seen how volunteering in Africa can be a fantastic experience for volunteers, but often a less than terrific one for the project or community they join," she writes, with wry diplomacy, in a section called, "How you can help." Instead, she advocates investigating the many worthy organizations in need of financial assistance (and, in my opinion, this exhaustively researched book should be everyone’s first step in that investigation).
Even more urgent, she says, is the need for us to "stop acting like it’s different" because it’s taking place in Africa. "You know," she says, "these folks could be your neighbours. It’s happening in their communities exactly the same way it would be happening in Calgary, and they need the same things. They need access to good health care. They need to have their human rights respected. They need to not be driven out of their jobs. And for there to be a good legal framework, for there to be a good health service, for there to be access to drugs, their governments need to function. And that means we stop screwing them over on debt and trade laws, and (in) restricting how many nurses they’re allowed to hire, through institutions that Canada is a voting member of, like the World Bank. Things that it’s very much within our power to affect. What happens in their countries and their lives is directly related to what we do.
"What I hope people will do the most is talk about it," she adds. "I still think that the conversation about what is happening in Africa is really limited and one-dimensional. That’s because we don’t get a lot of opportunities to know those people. That’s what I wanted to change." She laughs, putting on a mock-prissy voice. "And when I’m finished fixing Africa…"
Part of the proceeds from the sale of 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa are going to KARA Counselling, an AIDS organization in Zambia. Tickets for Nolen’s reading are available from Pages on Kensington or through WordFest. |
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