As it has become clear in the 25-year history of the disease, HIV/AIDS completely lacks prejudice, doesn’t discriminate by color, class, age or sexual orientation, and has no conception of what a “national border” is. So why then would there be conflict and controversy at the International AIDS Conference? For the same reason that the highest rates of AIDS occur in people of African descent throughout the world, that more than 50% of all new infections occurring in young people aged 15-24, that Africa suffers up to 75% of the 8000 deaths that occur due to AIDS daily, that women are increasingly becoming the face the AIDS.  HIV/AIDS is a wedge issue that in an almost prophetic way, forces us to confront the fundamental problems of difference and discrimination that plague human society: young people’s access to sexual health information, pharmaceutical company strangleholds on the high price of pills, international debt payments made by many African countries at the expense of health programs, government neglect of the needs of marginalized communities like sex workers and men who have sex with men, lack of funding for AIDS programs and vaccine research, discrimination against HIV-positive people, and a reckoning on the legacy of colonialism and its link to the origin of AIDS. Now can you see why there was conflict and confrontation at the 16^th International AIDS conference? For Africans, the residents of “ground zero” of the pandemic, this is an essential international forum to assert African solutions to the African epidemic. And despite the hefty travel and registration fee ($550!), they came in thousands. At the conference’ primary convergence point known as the Global Village (a sprawling complex hosting booths and stages with every conceivable type of organization from around the world), I caught up with a few Africans to talk about their efforts in countering the epidemic that has often been dubbed “The New Black Plague.”

            During one session, while South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) Sipho Mthathi had the podium, one of her colleagues was holding a sign that read “Media: Activist, not Hollywood Conference.” It was a direct message for the glitz-and-glamour-hungry cameras that had been so focused on what the Toronto Star called the conference “AIDSerati” like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Richard Gere, people whose engagement, while appreciated, often directs the focus away from the real actors: HIV-positive people, local doctors and grassroots community activists like Sipho and her colleague. For many Africans, this stinks of a colonial-Messiah-syndrome, and downplays the active role Africans have taken to counter the epidemic. For the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, that has meant mobilizing HIV positive people to form a veritable social movement that has successfully fought for a national treatment program, positive concessions on the South African Customs Union Free Trade Agreement and for price reductions from Western pharmaceutical companies. Voicing the goals and demands of the marginalized communities throughout the continent was a primary focus of a huge contingent of activists that included TAC, and who used multiple tactics from impromptu demonstrations to session interruptions to drive the message home. These same messages were broadcast daily on the activist blog and online convergence point, www.TimeToDeliver.org.

             I next caught up with two young African men working on the release and publicity of a new publication titled “African Youth HIV/AIDS Best Practices Handbook.” Dabesaki MacIkemenjima of Nigeria and Henry Hudson Luyombyah of Kenya were emphasizing the need to document successful models of youth HIV/AIDS interventions like the Dzalobana Bosele Arts Festival organized by Youth Health Organization (YOHO) in Botswana. As Dabesaki reminded me, it was a testament to the efforts of African youth in confronting “the defining crisis of their generation.”

            In the Global Village, one booth that was unmistakable was PROMETRA’s, mainly due Edward Fai Fominyen Ngu, whose distinctive Cameroonian outfits stood out even in the diverse crowds. PROMETRA is a continent-wide association of Traditional Healers, promoting indigenous medicines as alternative solutions to HIV’s opportunistic infections. In the fight against AIDS, such healers have traditionally been a lightning bolt of controversy, with opinions going from “uninformed skepticism” to “uncritical enthusiasm.” A young Zambian affiliated with Student Partnerships Worldwide confided his distrust of Traditional Healers to me: “these people tell you to eat some grass and walk around a hut 10 times with a chicken and you’re cured!” The extension of this has been the controversies surrounding the South African government’s promotion of lemon, ginger and root to treat AIDS over its support of anti-retroviral drugs. This position, which maverick U.N. Special Envoy Stephen Lewis called the “lunatic fringe,” has angered many HIV positive people, and resulted in TAC activists temporarily taking over the government’s booth and toyi-toyi-ing.  PROMETRA’s reps Edward Ngu and Djibril Coulibaly of Mali were quick to distance themselves from this controversy, instead emphasizing their practice focused on treatment regiments conducted in conjunction with western medicinal practices and were quick to remind me that 80% of all African use traditional medicine. “And the World Trade Organization agrees with us,” Mr. Ngu Added.

            While some sought to highlight commonalities in the fight against AIDS, others chose to create divisions. Perhaps the most infuriating spectacle at the conference was an article by Margaret Wente in the Toronto Globe & Mail that stated among other things, that “we [Canada] are importing HIV from sub-Saharan Africa” and that “our immigration policy is contributing to the spread of AIDS.” While it was possible the Globe & Mail editor had a case of temporary blindness, the truth is that Margaret’s uninformed, unsubstantiated and racist comments are indicative of exactly why the fight against AIDS is not being won right now. If she had even attended one program in the conference’s Diaspora Stream organized by African and Caribbean NGO’s in Canada, she would understand the structural problems that underlie the spread of the epidemic: poverty and inequality. Despite the work of Africans at home and abroad (like ACCHO in Canada and A Public Healthcare Foundation based here in the DC area), there is still a dire need to address these structural issues that exacerbate the epidemic. AIDS is not a short-term problem. A report by the United Nations Special Program on AIDS that brought together dozens of African intellectuals and professionals to sketch possible scenarios for the future of AIDS in Africa presented grim predictions: an estimated 90 million people (roughly 10 percent of the population) being infected with HIV in the next 20 years, if enough is not done. For the Africans in attendance at the AIDS conference, this is a fight for the future of the continent. In two years, they will again converge in Mexico city, along with tens of thousands of people from all backgrounds to (and we can only hope), set aside differences and focus on the real job at hand: ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

a late eulogy for the late farka toure, prompted by Tinariwen live @ NYC.

I cannot say that I’m not petrified at the thought of a silent Continent. I shudder to think that Africa’s constant sonic blast could be reduced to an impenetrable hum. Not even to a divine, primordial “ohm”, but to pure white noise, our very opposites, Sure enough, history & diaspora have proven such a thing happening to be as possible as dividing 800 million people by 0 (an asymptote that goes on forever). Remember that: “we ain’t nobodies” is the plural negative form of “I am somebody.”

But I couldn’t help but feel a moment of silence descend on the Continent two months ago, when the great Farka Toure rode a flying camel up above to say “I’m back, Maker” in tamasheq, songhai, bambara or one his many song tongues.

Ali Farka Toure dead? He of the primordial Mali blues? He of Talkin’ Timbuktu with the white slide Ry wizard? He the father of modern mali musicians? He the mersmerizing master of the djerkel? He the farmer of Niafunke?

Yes indeed, Ali Farka Toure died. And he’ll remain as dead as say, Bob Marley. Which is to say, he ain’t!

We say our thanks, we pour our libations, we hum to “Heygana” or “Diaraby” one more time because even though some of us don’t know the words, we understand them. But Ali Farka Toure’s passing in the land mass that is Mali leaves in its wake an ethno-national musical legacy in the Continent perhaps only matched by those of the Congolese crucible and the South African townships. I’m talkin’ Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabate, Salif Keita, Cheikh Lo, Rokia Traore, and of course the present great Tinariwen.

You would understand this if you’ve ever seen or heard the great band Tinariwen, ‘the edification of the lands’, birthed from the Touareg rebel underground to become sonic heroes of the Ishoumar generation, Tinariwen’s tamasheq blues is all electric. And a basic truism: electricity is always alive.

But such pagan ceremonies (which I am almost certain take place at the residence of our great American president every year) are reserved for the heathen masses. For those with a deeper appreciation of the good sir JC, we go to church, any church, to hear, what else, “good words” about jesus’ death and his, well, you know what.

I must confess here that “heathen/pagan/atheist” is one of the common terms used to refer to me by those who think their god wishes me ill. But if I know something about the god of the new testament, it’s that she’s a laidback afro-ed chick named Mercy.

So in case you hadn’t realized it yet, jesus died for a reason. And that reason was that we should survive two millennia so I can celebrate this event soundtracked to midi piano music while forcing myself to not sing the words “that makes me white as snow”.

I hope the pissed off christians haven’t stopped reading yet. (damn this spell check keeps trying to capitalize the C on christianity!). So yes, I went to church, I did. First time in a while (maybe four years), and despite my mostly diehard atheism I still gravitate to baptist churches. Habit, I guess.

The church I attended was rebuilt after a fire in 2000, and its members beamed like baby phoenixes. I was hoping for some romantic tale of ethnic tension, racist extremism, a church aflame with a glorious trail of smoke rising to heaven, and subsequently, a community banding together to reform the broken fragments of their lives. Instead, I was told of an electric fire started in the pastor’s office, and subsequently, a community banding together to form the broken fragment of their lives. Not exactly the dose of religious romance I needed, but that was ok, the sunday school teacher filled in that void:

Kids, Easter lilies remind everyone of Easter!
Does anyone know why?
No, not because they are “white as snow”.
o, not because they grow at Easter.
No, not that. Who knows? Ok, well,
Because you bury the seed, and after a while
It grows into something beautiful.
Just like Jesus, after he was buried, and came back to life.

[at this point, one of the little renegade sunday schoolers is dragged away from the piano as he attempts to bring down the house with a kiddie rendition of boogie on reggae woman. Ok, it was like two notes, but I swear he was about to do it like Stevie]

She proceeded to give each child a christian physical science experiment for homework. They each got an Easter lily seed, and some words about planting jesus in their hearts. Brilliant. I missed true blue christian guerilla theater.

I thought of our permanent fixations on crucifixes,
of planting crosses on graves that never grow,
of an open sepulcher with a graceful angel,
white as snow, sitting cross-legged on it,
tellin’ jesus’ lady friends, “he ain’t here! he ain’t dead!”

The pastor’s sermon was focused on catastrophes and eucatastrophes [good catastrophes]. He spoke of the absolute devastation the close friends of jesus must have felt on that Saturday after Good Friday. jesus was dead for a day, he said. What was that day like? A real catastrophe.

I thought of American catastrophes:
New Orleans, 9/11, Native Americans,
I thought of America’s Natural Disaster:
being isolated between atlantic and pacific seas.

But thank god for the deus ex machina of the resurrection. It made the next 2000 years possible: crusades, catastrophes, missionary conquistadors, christian guerilla theater, the da vinci code, easter bunnies, and most important of all, midi piano music, and me succumbing to the power of old hymns written by old white people and singing “Oh! precious is the flow / That makes me white as snow / No other fount I know / Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

I’m still “heathen/pagan/atheist” but I know the faith I invest in god’s nothingness is the same amount this congregation invested in his/her being. This was not first century Coptic stone, this was digital jesus, version 2006. And I liked it, at least this easter day.