One Room in Zambia: The Devastating Impact HIV/Aids Is Having On African Countries

Sometimes the story is out in the street. Sometimes, it is on a battlefield. Sometimes, it is in the room, sitting next to you.

After a four-hour drive south from Zambia’s sprawling city of Lusaka, I’m sitting in a small, whitewashed office with 11 people. Clement Chipollilo, an aid worker, is telling us about a Zambian village we will visit. HIV/AIDS, unemployment, and drought have ravaged the village. In recent years, most of the region’s cattle have died of pneumonia. Drought has trashed its agricultural base. It is the next thing he says, however, that makes us all sit up and listen.

He tells about what happens when parents die, usually from AIDS, and leave their children behind. “In the city,” he says, “children often raise themselves. A 7-year-old child becomes the head of the household. You’ll see them along the street. If the children are orphaned in a village, however, a relative usually tries to take them in, but sometimes they cannot afford to.” I ask him how often this happens, parents dying, leaving their children with nothing and no one. “A lot,” he says. “In fact, all four of us in the room are raising children who are not our own.”

There are four Zambian men in the room. They look up and nod. Between them, they are raising 23 children who are not their own. I ask them about their kids. Clement has one child of his own, but he is raising five more. When Clement’s cousin and his cousin’s wife died of AIDS, Clement took the kids. Bernard Zulu, another Zambian aid worker in the room, has four of his own children and is responsible seven more – including some of his own siblings.

Same goes for Victor Simuchimba, whose brother and sister both died of AIDS. He raised three children in addition to his own. Goffrey Mankhungwe Kamanga has two boys, but is raising or helping raise four more. Goffrey’s sister is sick with an AIDS-related illness. That means that soon he may have more. When I tell them how stunned I am by their stories, they laugh. “You should have met Aladon,” Goffrey says, “he is a fifth employee in our office and he has raised about 12 children that are not his own.”

All the men are bright, educated and passionate about Zambia’s poorest people. The stories they tell are both hopeful and desperate. On one hand, they are building a beautiful school. On the other, unemployment in the region is almost 100 percent. Huge advances in free antiviral medication for HIV/AIDS provide hope.

Yet, the average life expectancy here is just a stunning 38 years – down from 46 years just a few years ago. The HIV pandemic is crushing Zambia’s adult population. More than half of the nation’s 11 million people are suddenly under 15 years old. Their parents – dead or dying.

One of the men in the room mentions malaria. I later learn that all four Zambians in the room have malaria. “If you are Zambian, you’ve had malaria,” says Goffrey. But that is another story, for another room.

By John Larson, NBC News Correspondent