Africa's Growing Pains

“As the number of adults dying of AIDS rises over the next decade, an increasing number of orphans will grow up without parental care and love and will be deprived of their basic rights to shelter, food, health and education.” (Jenni Fredriksson and Annabel Kanabus). As people go on living their “normal” lives and eating dinner as a family, there are children on another continent that cannot eat as a family. They don’t have a family. Eighty percent of children that are orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa are orphans because of the AIDS epidemic. As a superpower of the world we have done very little to actually help these children. Former President Jimmy Carter has represented the United States in the battle against AIDS, however, as a country we must do more. All I can think about is if my sister and I had no parents. I cannot imagine the hardships and the life that they live with. I know that I personally could not handle it, therefore I see that it is up to us, the citizens to change the way that life is lead in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. America is a country full of millionaires and full of citizens that won’t give to causes such as finding a cure for AIDS. There are two hundred ninety-five million six hundred ninety-nine thousand eight hundred twenty-five people in the United States. If every person gave one dollar to the cause of AIDS, Jimmy Carter could take 295,699,825 dollars worth of food, materials to build schools and houses to Africa. I keep thinking of how we as citizens never do and never have done enough for our community. As a high school student I go to a nursing home just to play bingo and I participate in Adopt-A-Highway just to help better my community. How people can just sit and watch this happen, I honestly don’t know. I believe that we as a country should do more to help the people that we have abandoned. We are all trying to survive, some just need help with it, let us help them.1