GENTLY, rescuers coaxed a frightened boy from the clump of banana trees where he had been hiding for years like a wild animal. He had a shred of matting as shelter from the rain. There was nothing else.
His feet were bare, bruised and bleeding. His eyes were sunk into his face. He was monstrously thin and his torn and filthy clothes were hanging off him like rags. He was so traumatised he could hardly speak.
Today, two years on, Laison Kasobile, 15, looks a different boy. But he is still a lost soul. The tragedy of being an Aids orphan in a poor African village has never left him. It is etched in his face, the way he recoils with the fear of rejection, of getting a kicking and beating, of becoming an outcast again.
Five years ago, aged 10, Laison lost his parents to Aids. “First my mother got sick and listless and died,” he said. “A few months later my father died. He was followed by my brother and sister. I am the only member of my family left.”
After his parents’ deaths, Laison was taken in by his stepbrother. But not for long. The stepbrother denounced him as a witch and chased the boy from his home. It appears he was after the family land that Laison was due to inherit. He threatened to kill him if he returned.
For the next three years Laison lived in the wild a few hundred yards from Mwasi, the village in southern Tanzania where he was born, and scavenged for food. If he came too near, villagers drove him out with blows, kicks and stones, accusing him of being a thief and a witch.
In 2003 volunteers from the Mango Tree Orphan Support Programme, a charity based in the nearby town of Kyela that helps Aids orphans, heard about Laison and found him.
They conquered the villagers’ superstitions and placed him with a loving family who are providing him with a home. “He is a good boy and I treat him like my son,” said Andrew Mllawa, 33, his guardian, who has three children of his own.
The victimisation is now over. The stepbrother has died of Aids and Mwasi’s inhabitants accept Laison again. He attends the primary school where half the children in his class are Aids orphans, too.
Aids has laid waste to Tanzania as it has to much of sub-Sarahan Africa. A recent government survey has shown that at least 7% of adults — about 2m people — are infected with the disease. At least 2m have died since 1983. It is calculated that Aids is killing at a rate of 140,000 a year and the country has 2.5m orphans, projected to rise to 4.2m by 2010.
Some investors say the pandemic is beginning to cripple their businesses. So grave is the crisis that President Benjamin Mkapa made Aids the major theme of his farewell broadcast to the nation 10 days ago. Tanzania goes to the polls this week. After two terms in office Mkapa cannot stand again.
In an appeal to everyone to establish their HIV status and change their behaviour to stop its spread, Mkapa said: “Aids is wiping us out. Day after day, parents bury their children instead of children burying their parents.”
In the far southwest where Laison comes from, around the busy border towns of Kyela and Mbeya, the disease is particularly virulent and unforgiving. As many as one in six of the population is HIV-positive. Only a small number have access to life-prolonging retro-viral drugs because of the cost.
The towns are popular rest points for long-distance lorry drivers. Many are HIV positive and spread the disease among the local women.
Nobody knows the misery of Aids better than Andilile Ibrahim, programme director of the Mango Trust. Ibrahim was instrumental in saving Laison. The charity supports 5,000 Aids orphans in 36 villages around Kyela district providing medical, education, welfare and emotional support to them and their guardian families.
“This area is an Aids blackspot,” Ibrahim said last week. “The number of Aids orphans is growing all the time and we want to do more to help them. But there are already too many for us to cope with.”
The charity has a full-time staff of 12, including four nurses who visit each school and village every month to treat the orphans and their guardians. But the key is a system of 100 village volunteers who receive a bicycle and a uniform but no remuneration. Each supports about 50 orphans. They allow support for the orphans to be given where it is most needed.
As a result the charity has almost no overheads in Tanzania and none in the UK where its British trustees — led by William Fulton, a chartered accountant and a former high sheriff — give their help free.
You can help the Aids orphans by giving to the Sunday Times Christmas Appeal. The Kitchen Table Charities Trust (www.kitchentablecharities.org), which we are supporting this year, helps to fund a number of small charities in Africa which, like the Mango Tree, are transforming lives.
Last week we featured the CCBRT hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which performs hundreds of cataract operations each year, restoring sight to children and adults for just a few pounds. It also enables children with club feet to avoid life in a wheelchair with lengthy but cost-effective treatment.
The trust, founded by John Humphrys, presenter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, was set up to help charities like these that do extraordinary work on astonishingly little money. You can donate by using the coupon below or through the Times Online website (www.timesonline.co.uk/suntimesappeal), where you will find a “reverse auction” — the lowest unique bid wins — of iPods and TVs. All profits from the auction’s entry fee will go to our Christmas charities.
There is a glimmer of light in Tanzania. Next year it will start trying an HIV/Aids vaccine after trials in Sweden. The vaccine is said to have responded well to the type of Aids most prevalent in Tanzania.
Tragically, this breakthrough may be too late to save Laison from further misery. Last week Mllawa, his guardian, told Ibrahim his wife had just died.
Although he was too embarrassed to say so, it was clear to Ibrahim that she had had Aids. This means that Mllawa has probably got the virus, too. He may not survive long and when he dies Laison will be homeless once more.
