Marie-Helene Rousseau
13 November 2008
New York — In a country barely the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey, a disease has taken hold. Nearly 40 percent of Swaziland's population is HIV-positive, and the other 60 percent lives at constant risk for the disease.
HIV is a constant presence, weighing down on the lives of the estimated one million Swazis and the future of their country.
In "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick", which will premier this week in New York at the Nov. 14-16 Margaret Meade Film Festival, Jane Gillooly documents the day-to-day life of three grandmothers (gogos) living in the Lubombo region of Swaziland, which at 38.5 percent has the second highest rate of HIV in the country as of 2002, according to the International Labour Organisation.
The film follows the women, all pillars of their community, and their experiences with HIV/AIDS. Thandiwe Mathujwa, a nurse at St. Philip's Health Centre in Lubombo, regularly visits the homesteads that surround the centre to check on patients and spread awareness, while trying to do the same for her children and grandchildren at home.
Maria Shongwe struggles to take care of both her son and daughter's orphaned children -- a total of 10 -- admitting that they once had only fruit to eat for three days due to the lack of any other food.
Albertina Skhosana is in charge of the Skhosana homestead, and wonders if her children would still be alive had she known what she knows now five years ago. The question that permeates the film, as asked by Gogo Albertina, is: "What is going to happen when the gogo is dead?"
The film follows the gogos and their grandchildren through both the mundane and the poignant moments of everyday life. In Gillooly's subtle yet beautiful cinematography, seemingly insignificant moments are rendered with a poetic vision.
Nurse Thandiwe and Gogo Albertina gossip about a woman's remarriage. A grandmother proudly plays a steel stringed instrument with gusto, shuffling her feet, clad in torn tennis shoes. A small child attempts to place an emaciated puppy's foot in an over-sized flip-flop. It's these moments that make the film.
An ironic selection of images also strikes the viewer at times. At the health centre where they take a small child to get tested, a poster reads: "Not everyone has AIDS. You can protect yourself." But the film isn't just about the struggle of the gogos. It's also the story of a whole culture, a whole society, at risk of losing everything that has been passed down from generation to generation.
This risk of cultural disintegration comes when we witness the Matsenjwa homestead, which is headed by children. Except for the visits of Nurse Thandiwe, the children are in charge of their own homestead. She expresses her fear during the film: that the children who are completely orphaned by AIDS will not be able to learn cultural customs, and thus will not pass them on to their children. In this sense, the gogos are seemingly a last vestige of a threatened culture.
"We are leading to a different world, where children will be doing whatever they feel, because there was nobody who was watching over them. That this is right, this is wrong. They will be wild," Nurse Thandiwe worries. "Like, say, there is no one who is going to pass the customs from generation to the other. So our tradition will be just cut, and they will have children who are just giving birth to children."
A July 2007 FAO report indicated that 69,000 children in Swaziland have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. The International Labour Organisation reported that by 2010, the rate of AIDS is expected to stabilise at 36 percent, but the population of the country will be cut by 25 percent due to the disease.
What measures are being taken to combat this disease that has encroached on every aspect of society? Help from outside the community is rarely seen within the film, with the exception of a couple shots of USAID-provided oil and World Food Progamme provisions. As depicted in the film, efforts to increase awareness seem to be a grassroots endeavor -- Nurse Thandiwe is the one to confer with the women of the society and tell them the importance of using condoms.
The government of Swaziland, despite having launched initiatives to combat AIDS in recent years, still falls severely short of any accomplishments in this area. In 1999, Swaziland's King Mswati III declared the AIDS epidemic to be a national crisis, yet financial resources are still minimal.
According to a government report titled "The Second National Multisectoral HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan 2006-2008" only 0.25 percent of the national budget has been allocated to the AIDS crisis.
Even in terms of pensions for senior citizens, the gogos find themselves in a bind. As Nurse Thandiwe puts it in the film, even if you can get money from the government, "it's just peanuts".
Fear for the future of Swaziland penetrates the film's message. When speaking of the young Swazi children, Nurse Thandiwe says to her small audience at St. Philips Health Centre, "If they don't take good care of themselves, Swaziland will cease to exist."
Indeed, the UNAIDS report estimated the national adult prevalence of AIDS in Swaziland at 38 percent. The report stated that 87 percent of pregnant HIV-infected women are under the age of 30, and 67 percent of these women are under 25.
The statistics are endless, each one pointing to a more harrowing prognostic for Swaziland's future. But Gillooly leads us away from this barrage of statistics, offering us instead an intimate portrayal of daily life in one of the most AIDS stricken areas of Swaziland. We, as viewers, are given the rare opportunity to truly see the faces -- both wrinkled and youthful -- of the people behind these overwhelming numbers.
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