Weekly Geeks #4 – Blogging with a Purpose

I’m here complaining again that I’m in a reading slump and so have very little to blog about. I do have some books I haven’t blogged about yet so I guess that’s something I really need to work on. But now it’s time for Weekly Geeks, and I must say that I love theme for this week.

I am finding it difficult to select what cause to write about for Weekly Geeks . There are so many causes that are worthy of discussion and many that I feel are very important. I just needed to select the one that would be right for this week. While trying to think of which topic to write about I kept coming to issues that are prominent on the continent that should maybe called the forgotten continent because there are many issues there that just aren’t being dealt with, or if they are being addressed it’s not enough. I’m talking about Africa, and it makes me very sad that people are continually fighting for these people but all too often our governments do nothing or too little.

Before I came to wordpress I wrote about Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis. Lewis is a Canadian that has been fighting for assistance for people in Africa living with HIV/AIDS. He did this as the UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa which he is no longer head of, but I hope he continues to be a voice for those people, all to often they are children. If you’re interested in reading that previous post you can read that here. There is so much that I’d like to say about Lewis but will let the older post do that for me now.

I will admit that I haven’t read many books dealing with the subject matter, it’s actually only Race Against Time that I’ve read. But I see that Chapters.ca has many other books that I will be looking into and hope that you would be interested in checking out too.

28 Stories of Aids in Africa is the first book that jumped out to me while doing some research on which books would be great for this project. Stephanie Nolen has written a book that explores the lives of people that have been effected by this horrible disease. 28 may seem like an unusual number but the number is very significant in that 28 is the number of millions of people that are living with Aids in Africa. That’s a staggering number and it’s a number that doesn’t need to be that high.

Helen Epstein writes about her experience with people living with HIV/Aids in her book The Invisible Cure. In her book Epstein explores the various hurtles that need to be overcome in order for this epidemic to be defeated. Through her time in Uganda Epstein has come up with a possible solution to the problems, her solution requires a village to work on the problem. This is one book that I’d love to read as it seems to have some practical solutions that don’t require the cash and governments that have continued to fail these people.

Sizwe’s Test: A Young Man’s Journey Through Africa’s AIDS Epidemic is an individuals experience living in a place war is prevalent in his daily life, and the war is the war with AIDS. This is a war that I believe is worse than any other war that is happening in the world right now. It’s a war that is leaving a generation that has to grow up with the disease and they have to do it on their own. Too often families are being raised by 12 year old or children even younger. Sizwe’s story looks like a story that shows that there is hope in Africa, a story that appears to present a side Africa that we don’t hear. That side is there is a possible way to bring a better to life to people living with Aids. Johnny Steinberg is the author of Sizwe’s Test.

This is what Chapters has to say about the next book:

Never Give Up puts the AIDS pandemic into cultural context, raising questions about international health issues, cross-cultural experiences, racism, and homophobia. In his role as executive director of Open Arms of Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that provides meals and related services to people with HIV/AIDS, Kevin Winge shares his firsthand knowledge of the realities and challenges facing people living with the disease. While earning his master”s degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Winge traveled to the townships outside of Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived and worked with AIDS workers for six months. He chronicled his daily activities by telling stories about the people he came in contact with, accounts that are included here. Emotional and highly personal, the lives and conditions depicted in Never Give Up are a strong call to action for all of us to respond to this devastating disease with compassion and determination.

There are so many other books that I could talk about, but I think I need to stop. I hope that these titles give you some ideas and bring the dilemma to fore. I get too worked up talking about this subject and need to leave it at that right now. I’ll be sure to get some of these titles because I need to be more informed on the subject.

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