I’VE just returned from a visit to Africa where I spent time in Kenya with a group of young people, mostly from Dorchester Team parishes, who were visiting and working in day centres for impoverished and orphaned children in the rural towns of Mumias and Musanda by the Nasio Trust whose UK base is in Abingdon.

Both projects were based in communities where the numbers of people who are HIV positive is very high and with World Aids Day falling at the beginning of December it’s good to have the opportunity to share some stories with you.

In Kimberley and Kuruman Diocese, I visited the parish of Boegoeburg with Shirley Hoy, a member of the Dorchester Team Council, as the first step in establishing a parish to parish link and to help develop a project that feeds about 200 pre-school children.

Boegoegerg is a community in the Archdeaconry of the Kalahari.

It was created around the 1960s when people classified as ‘Coloured’ under Apartheid Law were forcibly moved from a variety of places to a village called Brandboom (which literally translated means ‘Burning Bush’). Deprivation is high, with unemployment at 70 to 80 per cent, and HIV infection rates of 40 to 50 per cent.

The project is run primarily by women who were inspired by an Anglican Women’s Federation conference to do something for their own community. Every Tuesday a meal is provided (which the children can take home) along with community based worship (songs, dances and prayer).

One of the leaders of the project, Sarah, has been nominated for the Shoprite Women of the Year award for her contribution.

That is the formal description – the stark reality of seeing so many children queue for a meagre plateful of food (especially when, as visitors and guests, your fine meal is spread on a table in front of them all) is shocking.

So is the protectiveness over their precious lidded containers, the significant number of under-fives who bring the babies that they are looking after, and the fact that these obviously hungry children are saving a tiny portion of food to eat – or even share – later.

We observe World Aids Day but I noticed that in Africa people always speak of being HIV positive.

It’s a more accurate and description and doesn’t pass judgement on the person.

Three people I met on my travels have three very different stories.

A four-year-old Kenyan boy who is HIV positive. His mother was “inherited” (when her husband died she was passed on to his brother) a convention which should allow a family to care for a widow but often results in violence and ill treatment.

His mother has died from an Aids related illness and he is HIV positive.

When we collected him from school to visit him at home he was asleep on the floor at school.

He lives with an uncle and aunt (aged 23) who care for his three older siblings (who are not HIV positive) and their own four children.

He is receiving treatment but his teacher says his prospects are not good.

There was also a seven-year-old Aids orphan – she is cared by and carer for her grandmother who is 90 and blind – while we were in Kenya she was admitted to hospital, paid for by the charity, and her house cleaned and renovated by our group of Nasio volunteers.

And there was a well-educated, enterprising women, who is transforming her local community, who told Shirley that her daughter was HIV positive. “I tell her that she is no different from her brother,” she said – but she had to say it – both to her daughter and to us.

So much is being done in terms of treatment, perception and care for our sisters and brothers who are HIV positive but it remains a drop in the ocean and anything we do to make a difference in ensuring a healthy diet, proper treatment and the right language is a must.