Residents take walk through Africa’s AIDS epidemic

McALLEN —You walk through a curtain and become Emanuel, a 3-year-old Ugandan boy who has lost his father to the AIDS epidemic.

Emanuel, you live with your 8-year-old brother Fred and your mother. You never knew your father; a suspicious disease claimed him when you were a baby.

You live in the Rakai area of Uganda, where HIV infections rank three times higher than the rest of this country of 28 million. AIDS first appeared here 25 years ago, and many consider this country the epicenter for the virus’s spread.

One day, your brother Fred tells you mother has fallen sick. He’s taking her to the doctor. There you learn your mother has the same mysterious disease that killed your father.

Emanuel’s mother has AIDS.

***

Thousands of people have become Emanuel or three other African boys this week in McAllen.

The World Vision Experience: AIDS national tour came to Calvary Baptist Church’s gymnasium on Harvey Street this week.

Staffers from World Vision, a not-for-profit AIDS relief group, used actual sound samples and photographs from Africa for the free event. Attendees used headphones and an I-POD to walk the narrated exhibit.

A narrator in thickly accented English tells each attendee “You are Emanuel,” or one of three other children.

The exhibit’s tour covers the entire country. It is set to leave McAllen at 7:30 p.m. todaymonday, making its next stop in Dallas. Organizers estimate about 90,000 people nationwide have walked through the children’s stories.

The Valley Aids Council, the Imagine Network, Calvary Baptist Church and Starbucks worked with World Vision to bring the tour to McAllen. About 240 people volunteered to set up, maintain and administer it here.

At the end of each person’s visit, World Vision asks for a donation.

For $30, one can buy a kit to give to a World Vision activist in Uganda. The kit includes gloves, basic medicine and cotton balls.

For $150, one can buy a bicycle for an aid worker in Uganda. Bike-riding helpers cover five times as much ground, and they also use it as an ambulance. World Vision workers in the United States travel to Uganda, where they teach their African counterparts to assemble and maintain the bike.

Attendees can also pay $35 a month to sponsor a child orphaned by AIDS. Their money will make sure the child has food, clothes and shelter. It will also ensure the boy or girl receives proper education.

***

Fred and Emanuel, Fred and You, struggle to survive in the little shelter, but they make it by. The situation, however, worsens when you fall sick.

Fred becomes worried that you have contracted the mysterious illness from your mother. He takes you to the clinic.

You pass into the clinic, and you await your results. Finally, you are instructed to step forward.

A woman stamps your hand. You are HIV negative. You do not have the disease.

You are one of the lucky ones.

***

Someone agreed to sponsor Fred and Emanuel years ago.

Emanuel has grown into a 9-year-old elementary school student. Fred’s studies are also going well.

Both boys aspire to become doctors.

Sarah Quintanilla, a 20-year-old McAllen resident, took the tour Sunday morning.

The story touched her, and she said she learned a much deeper understanding of the AIDS crisis.

Afterward, she couldn’t forget the things she learned. Quintanilla called everyone she knew and returned to take the tour with a couple of her friends, Martin Carrizales and Bertha Garcia, also 20 and of McAllen.

“Sometimes you think you have the worst problems,” Garcia said after the tour. “You realize here there are people suffering much more than you are.”

Sharing this enlightenment is the goal of the event, said tour Production Manager Joshua Mroczka.

About 33 million people world-wide live with AIDS. The volume of the problem makes it hard for individuals to understand the gravity, he said.

“It’s 33 million, but it might as well be 1 million or 100 million,” Mroczka said. “The number is too large, too ungraspable. What we did was break it down to one, one story.”