For Poor Women, An AIDS Safety Net

In my nightmares, I see the women we have failed to protect from AIDS. Women in South Africa do almost everything. When they cook, they harvest spinach, carrots and cabbage from vegetable gardens they have planted themselves. When they clean, they use brooms made from dried grass they walked miles to harvest. They wash their entire family's laundry by hand, wringing out clothes heavy with soapy water with hands that could break the neck of a chicken in one twist. The one thing women don't do in South Africa, however, is tell their husbands to use condoms.