Young

Tarun has finished his class 10. He passed and is currently working to earn a bit of money by delivering milk early in the morning before he goes to school. He is small for his age. Both his parents died by the time he was 8 years old.

He is also HIV positive.

Anjali has not finished class 10. She dropped out of school 4 years ago. After her parent's death she has been living in limbo - hiding inside her room. Her brother - who is negative - is working at odd jobs. Her uncle does not know what to do with her. She has repeated eye problems.

Anjali is 16 and has HIV.

Martin is 14. His father died of HIV. His mother has HIV too - as does he. He has been taking HIV medicines now for a few years. His sisters (both HIV negative) have both eloped. One came back and then lived through the tragedy of her husband committing suicide.

Tarun. Anjali. Martin.

The new face of HIV. A generation of children who are growing into adolescence and living with the disease thanks to the dramatic improvements in life-expectancies that anti-retroviral medications have brought.

The meds are great at keeping the virus down - and letting battered immune systems rebuild - and function as they should - even for young people.

But the meds are not fairy-tale pills which you can pop and suddenly your whole life is changed.

Our young friends are growing up with a landscape of loss around them. Most have lost a parent - if not both. Many are in family situations that are broken at best. Some have taken on the roles of parents for younger siblings.

The poverty that most of our young friends are living through is not incidental either.

And then there is the universal challenge of growing through adolescence itself - with all its joys and pangs.

We are dealing with a landscape of change which is quite different from what things were like when we first started working with HIV/AIDS. In those days we were mainly doing palliative care for dying adults - with the occasional child who was dying.

Now we have a slowly growing generation of HIV survivors - but ones that are not done with HIV. Rather, these young people are growing up with the complexity of HIV in their lives - and the damage that is has wreaked in their families.

Hari - an adolescent friend of ours who is living with HIV recently had an argument with some of his friends. He then came home and tried to hang himself. The neighbours somehow realised what was going on and broke in - and saved him.

His landlord threw this boy and his bother out of the tiny room that they were renting. But after much pleading allowed them back in.

No easy solutions. What do can we even say to a young boy who has deemed life too harsh to continue living?

What can we say other than try and listen. Try and remind each one of our young friends just how precious they are. Just how valuable each day is. Just how much God cares for them.

No magic buttons to press. No magic pills to pop.

But what we do have is hands that can touch. Ears that can hear. Legs that can walk alongside.

We have homes that can be opened, hearts that can be broken, lips that can speak words of life.