As I write this, the sun is setting on another day of remembrance.

It is December 1 and on this day we have become accustomed to making space for those who have lived and died with AIDS. 

The big picture is simply too much to handle.  So let's take a fragment.

In South Africa alone, each year some 80,000 babies are born to die. They contract HIV from infected mothers, and without preventive treatment, they are doomed to a sickly descent into death. Half will die within a year of birth; most of the others will perish before they are five years old.

Stories like this are simply too tragic, too overwhelming for us to take in.  So we turn our heads, become preoccupied and learn to forget.

Until this tale of loss comes knocking on our door and we are faced with the loss of a brother, mother, friend. 

‘Remember me?’ shouts the disease.  ‘I am the disease that you thought had gone away; the sickness that you naively believed would never touch you or the ones you love.’

Back in Africa, some are referring to this new generation of poor, untreated children as the ‘living dead’.  But I wonder if they begin to understand the irony of this label?

You see, here’s the thing.  In African traditional religion, the concept of the ‘family’ and ‘community’ is at the root of all existence.  As one African writer once put it:

I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am. This is a cardinal point in the understanding of the African view of man. (John Mbiti)

In other words, it’s not all about me; it’s all about us; and that ‘us’ extends even beyond life itself to those ancestors whose story continues to be so intertwined in ours.  Those who have passed on, says Mbiti, are therefore not gone.  On the contrary, these are the ‘living-dead’ who live on in families inasmuch as people have personal memories of them.  And our duty is to keep ‘alive’, not only the memory, but the spirit, of these ancestors who no longer can be seen - by telling stories about them.

‘Remember me?’ shouts each one of those children who have been taken away by AIDS.  ‘I am a nameless child that you thought had gone away; a member of earth’s family.  Will you remember me?’

Our own day will come, of course, soon enough.  And it will be our turn to cross the river and join our ancestors on the ‘other side’.  And I can find no other conclusion than this:

If in life, though, we have not taken the time, the trouble, to tell these stories, we can hardly expect anyone to keep our memory alive. Can we?

So don’t forget!

The Remember Me? campaign was a European Commission project launched in 2006 aimed at young people.  As a consultant on this project, I was asked to come up with a slogan that would capture feelings around the disease and the importance of remembering its continuing impact upon society.