June 24 - Frontlines and Family Ties

Today Team India continued to tour AIDS affected communities with Rev. Solomon. We were also joined by a handful of yesterday’s workshop participants, who invited us to see their old homes. These charming, colourfully-clad and smiling young ladies lead the way into a slum by the Bangalore highway and into the mud huts where their families continue to live. About 170 families live in this neighbourhood whose primary subsistence is due to transaction sex (mainly with truckers who use the highway).

It was heartening to see that one girl’s mother and father had both passed due to AIDS, and was left to the care of her heroic grandmother before being sent to live with proper education at the PCI resident school. Another one of the girls had lost her father, and both of her siblings to the virus, and her mother too had sent her to live with PCI. What made this experience even more devastating was the fact that the shanty community where these families live will be no more in 11 days.

The government of Tamil Nadu had given the illegal residence four months to vacate the property, as they plan to continue construction through the location. This tragic news struck the chord even harder that the work of PCI is HIGHLY important in Salem, as the children who continue to live in the Bangalore highway slums will soon be made homeless, as the PCI resident school is currently full due to limited space. Team India left the slum even more supportive of PCI’s work and AIDS activism in Salem.

Later that day, Rev. Solomon invited Team India to the inauguration of its new women and children community-based care facility, Hands of Hope. This new project is located in the Namakkal District, which is 62 km outside of Salem, and is being built largely in response to the HIV crisis as well as female infanticide in the area. Once more, Team India was touched by the dedication of local activists. A young, newly married twenty-year-old will be totally in charge of the new facility. The Team left the inauguration with a steadfast will to continue youth AIDS activism, as locals have done.

 






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