Chicago Tribune - July 30, 2008
Deanese Williams-Harris, dawilliams@tribune.com

The five Rwandan teens arrived in Chicago earlier this week to see how their exchange-student counterparts live as part of a program sponsored by WE-ACTx, an international initiative launched by AIDS activists.

Earlier this month, six Chicago-area students spent a week with the Rwandan girls in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. While learning about their cultural differences, both groups also were able to learn how the other copes with being infected with or affected by HIV.

During their stay in Rwanda, the Chicago teens created and installed a mosaic mural on the front of a Kigali pharmacy for HIV-positive women and children. They also learned about the history of genocide and visited HIV/AIDS clinics for women and children.

"Some men of Rwanda used HIV as a weapon to push genocide into the future," said Dr. Mardge Cohen, medical director of WE-ACTx. "Men would rape [the women] and get their medicine in jail, while the women were left to die without any treatment."

About 5 percent of the Rwandan population is HIV positive, compared to 0.2 percent of Americans, Cohen said. Rwandans ages 13 to 24 make up one of the fastest growing groups with HIV infection globally, and half the people become infected before age 25, she said.

Mary Therese, 20, the oldest of the group visiting Chicago, found out she was HIV positive in her third year of high school, she said. She lives with her grandmother. Her father, who remarried after the death of her mother, does not know she has the virus, she said.

"It was not easy for me," she said. "I was thinking, 'Why has God given me this suffering?'"

Therese said she struggles with not knowing how she contracted the disease. Her mother died in 1992, and she said her father does not have HIV. "Sometimes I think it can be from my mom," she said. "But the doctor told me before genocide in Rwanda they [reused needles] to give vaccinations."

Before enrolling in a program that offers free HIV regimens, Therese said, she was about to give up and drop out of school. "Now I feel like everything will be OK and I can finish my studies and life will continue."

The Rwandan youths are scheduled to complete a mosaic that will be displayed at the Ruth Rothstein CORE Center in Chicago.

Both groups learned to eat different foods, marveled at some of the traditional differences at home and school, and shared with each other the native dance of Rwanda and Chicago's "Cha Cha Slide." But more important, the youths picked up valuable lessons and developed new ideas on how to fight HIV in their communities.

Latrice Walker, 19, of Chicago is planning to launch a program in her high school to raise HIV awareness. Students who participate would be required to wear T-shirts saying they are HIV positive and carry weights to symbolize the burden of HIV. They also would take placebos to get an idea of the regimen HIV patients go through. Afterward, participants would chronicle their experience.

"Hopefully it will show people that think it can't happen to them that it can happen to anybody," Walker said. "I want to help fight the stigma so more people will get tested."

All of the girls visited Millennium Park Tuesday and are scheduled to visit other Chicago-area attractions later this week.

At a lunch sponsored by After School Matters, Therese took time to offer advice for teens diagnosed with HIV.

"My first one is to accept that you have HIV, take care of yourself and take your medicine in order," she said. "My second is to stay in school and remember you can have a good life."

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