• The African Widow
• Soweto Slums Widows Project

"Imagine being an African woman with 8 children, trying to make ends meet by living on the average Kenyan wage of $1 a day. Up by 4:00am building a fire to make tea for the kids. While the fire is gaining some momentum, she rushes to a neighbor’s house to buy some fresh milk. By 5:30am she pulls the kids out of bed, bathes them, gives them a cup of tea (no bread because she can’t afford it) then by 6:30 she sends them off to school. They have to leave so early because of the two mile walk and if they are there a minute past 8:00, they will be beaten and sent back home. After the kids leave for school, the African woman washes some clothes (by hand) then sets out walking from garden to garden looking for work, weeding, digging, anything that will bring that $1 so she can buy a meager amount of corn maize and vegetables so the kids don’t have to go to bed hungry like they did last night.

"After a long days work digging, she gets a few shillings, enough to give the kids something for dinner. She arrives home at 7:00pm to find a small pile of wood the children collected on their way home from school. She builds the fire and cooks the food. By 9:00pm serves the children dinner. After the meal is finished, she washed the dishes and by 11:30pm, climbs into bed, exhausted, discouraged, hopeless. The only thing keeping her going is knowing that her children can’t survive without her. As she drifts to sleep, she dreams of the days when her husband was alive, when she didn’t worry about the 8 mouth’s to feed, when she enjoyed cooking for her family, when life wasn’t such a burden.

"The story of the African widow is all to common. Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, I see her, struggling for her life and for the lives of her children. In most cases, as she was home caring for the children and preparing food for her husband, he was with another woman, unknowingly contracting HIV, leading to his death and leaving the poor African widow all alone with nothing…"