Aids Week

Coffin Shop – all sizes – across the road from the entrance to the Ulster Carpets factory in Durban when I visited. HIV rates were in the high 30%’s at that time. My most challenging moment? Sitting in a township house near Port Elizabeth – plastic sheeting to keep the rain out – with a lady who was obviously terminally ill with Aids. She hadn’t seen a doctor and had got medicines that other people suggested. We talked about it – falteringly – while an American medical soap played on the TV in the room. Medicine as entertainment in the presence of terminal illness. Then the priest I was with said, ‘David, will you pray with us?’