The government woke up to a nightmare when government employees started dying like flies from the illness. The authorities put their heads together to figure out what to do. They start educating people through radios, local meetings in the health centers and making sure that couples work and live together.

With half of the adult population infected, Botswana was a dying nation. People moved from one funeral to another. Aids orphans were at mercy of sex industry. Many young girls were raped, because there was this belief that if an infected person has sex with a virgin, then they got cured.

In one of those countless funerals. I happened to talk to a small, who was having a big sore on her arm. “You have to go the doctor with that wound before it eats your arm,” I said. No way, she answered.

My mother went to the doctor and that was the last time I saw her, she said in tears in her eyes. I am sorry for your loss, I said.