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...wash their laundries, putting them on the line. Music is coming from every house."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
With candid neighbourhood sounds, Thembi could be leading a visitor by the hand through details of her young life. But, in fact, she is thousands of miles away. As a broadcaster for the New York-based Radio Diaries, Thembi carries a microphone through her daily routine, recording a unique amalgam of youthful vibrancy and solemn silences. Her exuberance--a smile so wide you can almost hear it--shines through some of the most difficult situations imaginable. She is one of the staggering 29 per cent of Khayelitsha residents infected with AIDS. In addition, according to Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), the estimated 500,000 township residents also suffer from high unemployment and poor living conditions.
"There are a lot of us here who are sick", Thembi tells her audience. "But people don't disclose it because they are scared of discrimination. People talk, they point and whisper. Sometimes if they hear that someone has HIV, they burn the house down, so that you can't stay there anymore." Despite this oppressive stigma, Thembi's strength and determination to be heard prevail as she confronts her disease head-on. Her 22-minute broadcast takes listeners into her doctor's office and finds its way into her mother's house and into her private talks with her boyfriend, Melikhaya. "She has a kind of quiet poetry", says Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman, who stumbled across Thembi while working on another project in South Africa. "You lean in closer when she speaks. She draws you in."
Twenty-five years after the first AIDS diagnosis, activists face the...
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