Chicago Tribune - June 28, 2007
Mark Silva, Tribune Washington correspondent on assignment in Africa, mdsilva@tribune.com

Yet one cannot get past the fact that, no matter how glamorous life appears here on the sunny streets of Cement Town, a sector of seaside Maputo where massive homes are made of concrete and the streets are paved, that life in Cane Town, where houses are made of cane and roads are unpaved, is not so pretty. One in 10 babies never make it past infancy in Mozambique, and 16 percent of this nation of 21 million is infected with HIV.

First Lady Laura Bush, introduced here as "the mother of all American citizens" by a preacher at a seminary filled with singing children praying for their country and praying for her, has come to announce the newest U.S. initiative against malaria. And with the delivery of her message of hope in the battles against AIDS and malaria, she listened to personal, painful testimony about the stigma attached to AIDS.

Seated in a circle of men and women and toddlers in Maputo's central pediatric hospital Wednesday, a middle-age man spoke about the disease that has afflicted him for seven or eight years. "The disease kills," he said. "The stigma kills a person even worse."

The ill 'hide like rats'

"A number of people don't go to the hospital. ... People hide like rats because they are scared of the discrimination. Every day, we see people suffering, killed, because they're afraid of going to the hospital," he said.

A woman seated beside him spoke of a disease that afflicts two of her children. The youngest has been admitted to the hospital 14 times.

"I have two daughters who have the same problem," she said. "It is a difficult time, but with the therapy now, things are going better."

"Thank you for your courage," Bush told them. "The more people reveal ... the more they will live positively, with a more normal life."

Bush had come for some business matters: announcing the first U.S. grant for Mozambique under the President's Malaria Initiative, a three-year, nearly $2 million commitment to benefit 1.5 million people in a program that concentrates on spraying homes and providing insecticide-treated mosquito nets.

She also announced a Millennium Challenge Corp. $507 million compact with Mozambique's government to pay for upgraded roads and better agriculture -- with the largest share, more than $200 million, going to clean water in urban and rural areas, which should eliminate many mosquito breeding grounds.

Arriving later at a sandlot encircled by windowless cane huts topped with corrugated metal roofs, she watched as masked workers sprayed the hut of one family whose daughter is being treated for malaria.

In the hospital, seven children sat at a table reading books and drawing pictures. Mrs. Bush sat at one corner, her daughter Jenna at another.

Jenna Bush, who teaches 3rd and 4th graders in Washington, is returning from a stint with UNICEF in Panama in which she has produced a book about a Latin American woman living with AIDS. It will be called "Ana's Story."

"What grade are you in?" Jenna Bush asked the children. Fourth and 5th, some said, and the boy beside her, an 8th grader, wanted to talk. With a mix of Portuguese and English, translated for his visitors, he said enough for the first lady to surmise: "Says he was 11?" she said with a painful smile. "Started when he was 11."

The boy, here in this hospital for young AIDS patients, hopes to become a pilot someday. "A pilot," Jenna Bush said with delight.

At the Maputo Seminary, named for Pope Pius X, Rev. Diis Salamao Senguilane directs the Inter-religious Campaign Against Malaria. It is his group of Roman Catholics, Muslims, Methodists, fundamentalist Christians and others that will receive the first American grant in Mozambique for the fight against malaria.

'We will succeed'

"It was human beings who created conditions that are favorable for malaria," Senguilane said. "Therefore, we will succeed, because God is with us."

They speak here of the importance of the woman as a teacher.

"When the mother speaks, the whole family listens," he said. "It is well known that the mother is the guardian of health and life, life in its fullest."

Then, with a nod to Laura Bush, he said, "We are blessed to have the representative of the mother of all American citizens."

"Defeating this epidemic is an urgent calling," the first lady said. "Faith leaders can reach their members. ... Trust is built and hope is provided in places where hope is scarce."

Children in gray and black choir robes had come for an assembly at the seminary, situated squarely in that Cement Town sector of Maputo where life, for the most part, is good.

"We pray for our country ... and we pray to God," they sang in English.

"We pray for us, we pray for Laura," the children sang, "and we pray for everybody in the world.'

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