How can one fight such mad ideas? People are desperate. How will it be possible to control the Aids epidemic if people continue holding such impossible beliefs?

Christine had talked about her work. About her work as a teacher of the next generation.

She said: "Every time I face my class, it's as if my vision becomes blurred. The same as it is with my father's eyes. Sometimes he complains – although he is not the complaining kind – that everything round about him seems to be duplicated many times over. He sees ten of me, and just as many of my mother. It's the same with me when I'm standing in front of my pupils. Despite the fact that I don't have a problem with my eyesight. Not yet, anyway, although I know that many people with Aids go blind before they die. I see my pupils multiply before my eyes. And I see all the children who have not yet become my pupils. All those who will never learn how to read and write. Being able to read and write means being able to survive. How else can you find out how diseases are spread, how else can you learn how to protect yourself and survive? Of course medicines are important, of course I wish my wages were sufficient for my treatment. But it's just as important that all the children I see as blurred images have access to the knowledge that could save them from an all-too-early death. I want them not to have to write memory books for their own children because they die so young."

That is what Christine said. Several times. She wanted me to remember. That's why she kept repeating it.

21

Memory books. Writings as death approaches, about death and about life.