In this very village, Aida's village, there is something else that all the other villages in the area have in common. Many of the villagers have Aids. Many are already dead from the disease. You can already see the big gap: lots of children, quite a few old people, but not many in between. Aids generally kills people from fifteen to twenty years old to those in their early fifties. The old people have to look after their grandchildren when their parents are no longer alive. When the old people die, the children are left to look after themselves. What that means is obvious to everybody. Children who have to be one another's parents have a pretty distorted start in life. They slip up.

Even if life goes on as usual, it is as if there is an endless silence all around them. Daily events, everyday events, take place under a cold shadow. Many people, too many people, are going to die. That shadow is not black, nor is it white. It is just not visible. It is like a cold gust of wind.

In Aida's village the silence was so tangible that it did not need to be visible.

8

There were various sorts of waiting among the people I met in Uganda. Those who knew they were infected and spent every day looking for symptoms. Those who didn't know, those who had refused to be tested, but nevertheless looked for symptoms every day, from the moment they opened their eyes.

But there is another kind of waiting. For the people who find themselves in the same position as Aida. She is only a child, she knows that she is not infected, but she will become mother to herself and her siblings the moment that responsibility is passed on to her.

And now I see her again in a dream. It is not a very long time since we were together. The last I remember of her, she is waving vigorously. Even when she could no longer see me nor the car, no doubt she went on waving.