It is hard to say how much these Kachin people across the border with China are affected by HIV ... this Holt article doesn't say much about it.

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Gourd flutes and HIV/AIDS: Family preservation in a remote mountain village
April 9, 2008 at 7:19 am
Alice Evans, Managing Editor of Holt Publications

Yunnan province, China—Peasants and water buffalo labor in the rice paddies as we travel by van along a cobbled granite road. Small tractors chug past carrying loads of sugar cane. The economy is slash-and-burn agriculture. The bane is poverty, heroin, HIV/AIDS. Smoke rises in the distance in small clouds. The terraced mountainsides are tinged with green. Bamboo huts and small adobe houses blend and crumble at the edges of the world.

We are traveling with central government officials into a remote part of China that few Westerners ever see. Off the beaten track, near the Myanmar border and edging the Golden Triangle, this part of Yunnan province is peopled by ethnic minorities. We are coming as donors to see how our funds are being spent to help children affected by HIV/AIDS in this Holt International family preservation project.

village-dsc_0413.jpgThe driver turns up a steep and rutted dirt road. A drumbeat starts as we step out among the trees, carrying our gifts through the entrance gate of a walled village. The headman greets us, along with beautiful young women dressed in traditional ethnic clothing. Young men play drums and flutes. And then, we see the children, lined up on either side of the grounds of the village school, as colorfully dressed as wild birds, their faces serious, playful, beautiful and tragic.

“When I first visited them two years ago,” says Jian Chen, the director of Holt International’s China Program, “I asked myself, what can we do for them? These children have nothing. We help them, but I worry what will happen to them.”

If you read the progress reports sent three times a year to sponsors, you begin to understand how difficult their lives are. All their stories are similar. One boy lost his heroin-addicted father to AIDS, and he and his sister rely on his mother’s farm work to support them. One girl lost both parents to AIDS and lives with her grandmother, who cannot educate her. Sometimes the girl has nothing to eat. A few of the children themselves are HIV infected.

Teamwork and partnership

Holt International has been working in partnership with local schools and teachers, regional authorities and the central government for more than a year to help 156 children here and in other regional schools stay with their extended families and continue their education. Holt sponsors and donors pay for meals, medical attention, travel stipends, school supplies and music education. This day, we bring them schoolbooks, pencils, sausages, candy and rice cakes.

They stay here in dorms during the week, with some children walking five or six hours to go home on occasional weekends to caretakers, a parent or other family members. It depends on who is left. It depends on who will take them in.

When we visited another school earlier in the day, children sang for us, danced and played hulusis, thelongchuan-dsc_0182.jpg traditional gourd flutes provided by Holt through a donation last year by an Altrusa club. That donation also covered winter clothing and a music teacher. Making music is something to build their confidence, give them a means of expression and show them how to support and interact with one another. We brought along 10 more flutes as presents, which will allow more children to join the class.

After one young girl in a Dai peacock dress soloed on the flute, another sang a local song called “My hometown Jingpo Mountain.” A young boy sang a Jingpo folk song: “I am missing my father and mother.” In unison, the children spoke: “Since we have come here to live in this school, the school is our warm home.”

“They come here with nothing,” Jian Chen tells us. “No toothbrushes, no toothpaste. One little boy had no clothes. The teachers try very hard to get people to donate things, and they often buy school supplies for the children themselves.”

We arrived on a national holiday, when families traditionally sweep and decorate ancestral graves to honor their dead. A little girl sat weeping as we prepared to leave. She had hoped to go home for the weekend to the uncle who is her caretaker, but he was too busy to allow the visit. Holt China Country Director Bi Jianjun comforted her alongside her teacher. “She’s a good girl,” says Bi. “A good student. Her teacher says she will take the girl home with her this weekend.”

“This project takes great teamwork from the Holt China staff,” Jian Chen emphasizes. “Bi and site manager Tracy Lian are the soul of the program. They work hard to make it happen.”

Jian interprets a billboard we pass along the road: Taking Drugs is Like Committing Suicide. We see evidence of public education everywhere we go—an effort to battle drug addiction and HIV/AIDS. Evidence, too, that all levels of government are making an effort to help these children.

Our Holt team bought new bedding and mosquito nets for dorm rooms. Other improvements arelongchuan-dsc_0338.jpg underway supported by local, regional and central government funds.

“I hope we can make this project a model for the country, and make a good example for the rest of the country,” a ministry official says.

I think about the loaves and fishes, and hope that the love we came so far to share will somehow multiply.

http://holtintl.org/blog/?p=214