JOHANNESBURG, Dec 2 (AFP) - Naledi Maphoto is a normal 13-year-old, strutting around playfully in her grandmother's white high heels and wearing fake blue jewellery around her neck.
She is also one of 660,000 AIDS orphans in South Africa, a country with one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world.
Naledi's mother died on her birthday this year, leaving the teenager and her HIV-positive baby sister homeless.
Naledi and her sister now live with Lerato Maluleke, a 50-year-old social worker and teacher who gave up her job to open up her home in the east of Johannesburg for children affected by the disease.
"It was painful when my mother died. It felt like nobody cared for me, nobody minded about me. I didn't want to live. But now I'm happy here," Naledi said.
The latest UN figures show that five million of South Africa's 46 million citizens carry the virus, while 360,000 died of AIDS in 2001.
"I've had a bad year," Maluleke said.
"We lost six children this year. It's very strenuous and stressful."
Dressed in orange and green traditional clothes, Maluleke kicked out her shoes and recalled how she started looking after the orphans.
"I had a vision from the blessed Virgin Mary," she said. "She showed me I should take care of these children. I was in denial about it for a long time, but then she reappeared and I decided this is serious."
A tiny 11-month-old baby with watery eyes sat at her feet. He was not as lucky as the chubby eight-month-old happily playing next to him, who received drugs preventing HIV transmission from mother to child.
"He has full-blown AIDS. He can't even sit properly," Maluleke says.
A volunteer careworker sat with another baby on her lap at the dining-room table, scattered with pill boxes and medicine bottles donated by a nearby hospital.
She is also HIV-positive, and decided to give a hand to Maluleke when she was told her own toddler suffered from AIDS.
Maluleke and her husband started taking children into their home about seven years ago and desperately need funds to continue taking care of them.
The couple receives 18 rand (two dollars) per day for three of the 20 children, but have to support the remaining 17 orphans out of their own pockets.
"We used to have nice things and a nice house. But now the only thing I care about is keeping the place clean, and caring for the children."
In one of her bedrooms lay a skinny 36-year-old woman, bed-ridden with AIDS, and too weak to talk. Her baby died in Maluleke's home this year.
Naledi, who does not have HIV, proudly explained how she helps Maluleke, whom she refers to as her "grandmother", to take care of the babies, including her sister.
"I clean the house, I cook, I wash the children and I play with them. I'm their teacher."
She and her friends often discuss HIV/AIDS, she said.
"I have a friend whose uncle died of AIDS. We always sit together and talk about it and share secrets."
But ever since her mother died, she has been too scared to play with boys of her own age at school.
"Me and my friends are afraid now. We never play with boys," she said with a shy smile.
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