"I told Aida once she had celebrated her thirteenth birthday. I noticed that the disease was beginning to affect me. It was no longer dormant in my body. It had started moving."

"What did she say?"

"You've asked that already. She said nothing. She was distressed. I believe she already knew that I was ill."

"How could she know that?"

"Aida's a bright girl who listens to what people are saying. And she's not afraid to ask. But most important of all is that she doesn't believe all those people who say that this disease does not even exist."

We had reached the car. The driver was asleep. Flies were buzzing around, there was a smell of crushed banana and wet soil. Christine looked at me.

"You are not surprised? You must know that lots of people, many too many, still think there is no such disease as Aids. Or else they think it's a disease they can get rid of in various terrible ways."

I nodded, because I did know.

When we drove off, Aida was standing with a huge pan in her hand. Christine waved, as did her mother and other members of the family. Aida didn't wave because she was holding something in her hand. But I knew even then that I would be returning.

How can you sometimes know things you don't know? You just know.

20

That evening I thought about what Christine had said. About all those people who still refused to accept that there was such a disease as Aids. And those who did not deny the existence of the disease, yet maintained that there were strange and wondrous ways of curing it. I remembered a sign I'd seen fifteen years before in Zambia, somewhere between Kabwe and Kapiri Mposhi. "I'll repair your bike while my brother cures you of Aids."

I thought about what is happening in South Africa right now. The incidence of rapes has been growing for a long time. Until only a few years ago, most of the rape victims were grown women, or at least teenagers. Not any longer. Since 2001, in some parts of the country, there has been an increase in the number of rapes of children, and most repugnant of all: rapes of infants. This has to do with the widespread, lunatic belief that you can be cured of Aids by having intercourse with a virgin.