Inspired by AIDS victims

"It must have been so depressing - how can we get on top of this terrible problem?" That has been a common response from people when I have explained that I've just spent 10 days visiting projects for an HIV/AIDS charity in southern Africa.

They then seem taken aback when I reply that I have returned inspired and uplifted by the excellent things I have seen.

As marketing co-ordinator for the UK operation of Hands at Work in Africa I went, in July, to the head office in Masoyi in the Mpumalonga province of South Africa, and then on to central Mozambique to visit their Rubatano project.

There are 40 million people with HIV/AIDS in the world, 25 million of them in sub-saharan Africa. Hands at Work trains volunteers, people like you and me, in basic care and health skills to keep a watchful eye on their neighbours and orphans and vulnerable children stricken by HIV/AIDS. This is called Home Based Care (HBC) and has become a much copied model.

In Masoyi there are some 100 volunteers working under department leaders.

At the Rubatano project in Mozambique, still in its infancy, there are 35 volunteers. They don't just monitor the health and well-being of their charges; they might cook a meal, clean the house, refer them to Hands at Work for medical, financial or care assistance, ensure orphans are doing well at school, take people to clinic or hospital or simply sit with them and give them time and prayers to ease their pain and loneliness - HIV/AIDS is still an unmentionable stigma in these societies.

I was taken to visit a number of patients by a beautiful young volunteer nurse called Unathi.

The first was a 32-year-old mother of lively eight-year-old Timut, who seemed to be all too aware what the body pains and shivers she was now enduring meant; an elderly man James, who didn't know his age, the last of five siblings with no pension coming through, needed a chest X-ray because he could hardly breathe.

So where is the inspiration in this? It's in the hands, hearts and eyes of the HBC volunteers who spot these difficulties and do something about them - Timut's mother would be taken to the clinic for a medical check and counselling. Volunteers will ensure that Timut is cared for and looked after at school. Hands at Work would provide the funds for James to get to hospital or take him there.

Life expectancy in Mozambique is 36 years, with over 20 per cent HIV/AIDS infection rate in Gondola, the village where I stayed in central Mozambique.

Here, people live in mud huts with dirt floors. They subsist on produce from the family small holdings - mashambas - which might be miles from their hut. If they're lucky, they might sell surplus.

Carlos, who manages the project and shepherds his flock of volunteers as attentively as any guardian I've ever met, pointed out that the price of some teenagers being at school was not just the inability to bring home money for the family. It was also the costs for fees, books, pencils, uniform, bus fare and school trips.

So how did I come away uplifted from that? Well, we worked out on a scrap of paper that, for the price of two England football shirts, a teenager could be kept at school for a year.

They call grannies 'vo-vo' in Mozambique (it's Gogo in South Africa). However they are known, they are being left holding their children's babies as a whole generation of adults has succumb to HIV/AIDS.

Susannah in Gondola now cares for the five children of her two late daughters at a time of life when she might have expected to be cared for herself in her old age.

Here, American nurses on Hands at Work's gap year programme 'Footprints', sat with the children, spoke gently with Susannah, took medical notes and administered the first dose of antibiotics to Juinio.

Two of the children are HIV positive.

I am inspired because I know that people in the UK care deeply about the Susannahs, Juinios, and Augustines if only they get to know about their plight.

I asked Carlos what he wanted me to do when I returned to Britain:

"Tell people in the UK we are so thankful for being touched and remembered by them" he said. "Go and speak the voice of the orphan in Mozambique, the voice of the patient, the voice of the volunteer".

Donations can be made and further information can be found at www.uk.handsatwork.org, or by calling 0121 550 7056.

Veronica will be talking about her trip and showing images of what she saw at St Peter's Church, Edgmond, at 7.45pm on Tuesday October 16.