 NEW YORK -- In poor, rural Malawi, a broad-shouldered, well-dressed man rushes into 17-year-old Olivia's tin-roofed, dirt-floored shack, overpowers the teenager and rapes her.
Two years later, the same man sexually assaults her again. After one of the two children Olivia has from the rapes becomes very sick, she gets some bad news: "I am so sorry Olivia," a woman says, "your blood test shows you have contracted HIV and very likely passed it on to your daughter."
The story of Olivia is chronicled in an interactive, sometimes-virtual exhibit at Grand Central Terminal this week.
Designed to evoke a typical rural African shantytown, the exhibit is a labyrinth of rooms with tin roofs, dirt floors and plywood walls treated to resemble mud walls seen in some villages. Organizers are counting on hurried Grand Central commuters to "step off the train" and "into Africa" to see if they can "survive the journey of a child."
"This exhibit isn't going to end AIDS in Africa," said Mike Yoder, a program director at World Vision. "But this one tool is to raise awareness and support."
For the average American, the devastating impact of AIDS on Africa "hasn't broken through," he added.
The free exhibit was staged this week by World Vision, a Christian organization battling poverty and disease among children, to bring attention to the plight of the ravages of HIV/AIDS in Africa.
World Vision estimates that 13.2 million women in sub-Saharan African are living with HIV. That is 76 percent of all cases among women worldwide, the group says. An estimated 12 million African children have lost one or both parents to AIDS-related illnesses, World Vision says. The group calls the pandemic "the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time."
Wearing headphones and carrying an iPod-like device, visitors walk into rooms made to look lived-in. Olivia's living area features clothes hanging on lines, shoes, and dishes.
The exhibit's narrator, a low woman's voice, sometimes refers to visitors as Olivia: "Please step through the door, Olivia," instructing visitors to the next room.
In the "clinic," the visitor-as-Olivia learns she and her daughter are HIV positive. A woman behind a smudgy sliding window (a World Vision worker) stamps visitors' right hand with a red encircled plus sign.
Drawings and hand-written poems from African children adorn walls. In "Why?" Cecelia writes: "You are a killer _ so hartless ... Why do you take mothers away and leave children to go astray?"
The exhibit touches on the myths and stigmas surrounding the disease and offers some hope, highlighting the fact that Uganda has reduced its infection rate from 21 percent in 1991 to 6 percent in 2003.
The outlook isn't so great in Malawi. The exhibit mentions how Malawi, while a "beautiful" country, is a place where one in 13 people are HIV-positive and nearly 1 million people live with AIDS. The average life expectancy is 37, World Vision says.
"It was really moving," said Patty Macias, 38, of Yonkers, who visited the exhibit during her lunch break with a co-worker. "It was ... wow."
Macias' co-worker, Iliana Prevost, 31, of Brooklyn, said: "It was informative, it was moving, it was touching, it was beautiful, it was hopeful."
The other three people featured in the exhibit include Timothy, also from Malawi, who by the age of 4 had lost his father, siblings and an uncle to AIDS. Then his mother dies of the disease before he finds out he is HIV-positive.
There's also Steven, a 13-year-old from Uganda, who is kidnapped by rebels and, like thousands of other children, forced to fight in their armies.
Beatrice is an AIDS orphan from Zambia who at the age of 7 began raising her niece after Beatrice's older sister died during child birth. Beatrice is vulnerable to prostitution for survival, and rape.
While real photos of Olivia, Timothy, Beatrice and Steven are used in the exhibit, their names were changed, Yoder said.
The free exhibit, The World Vision AIDS Experience, ends Saturday, and will next be featured at the International AIDS Conference on Aug. 13-18 in Toronto. |