Before she was diagnosed with HIV, Morolake Odetoyinbo, or Rolake, was living the life she’d always dreamed of. She had graduated from performing arts school, gotten married, and was running her own small bakery in northern Nigeria, where she lived with her husband on a military base. Then her husband tested positive for HIV, and five months later Rolake, 28, received the same diagnosis. Her doctor gave her between 5-12 years to live.
“At the time I was just a...
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Sibulele Sibaca lost both her parents to AIDS when she was 16 years old, causing her and her brother to became a child-headed household. They felt alone, but in a sense they were not: they joined nearly 8.3 million other children who had lost a parent to AIDS across sub-Saharan Africa.
This sense of national togetherness—and their secure and loving childhood, despite the presence of HIV in their family home—would later inspire Sibulele’s work as a South African HIV/AIDS campaigner...