Christmas for HIV-positive orphans

Christmas is a joyful holiday when the whole family gathers around a nice meal, parents distribute presents and nice memories are built. However, for HIV-positive orphans, Christmas can be a dark moment that makes them feel lonelier than ever.-By Joanna Nganda

HIV-positive orphans receiving gifts from Santa Claus.©Iwacu

That is the reason why the National Association for supporting HIV-positive People (ANSS) has organized ‘Christmas for Children’ for 300 HIV-positive orphans.“ANSS has a bad reputation among its youngest beneficiaries”, says Charles Kayaga, Social Assistant of ANSS, “they get injections, blood tests, etc. When they come here, most of the times they get syringes and go back home in tears. Most of them are so young; they don’t even understand why we are taking blood samples. For those, ANSS is nothing less than a place for torture. With this event we want to change the image the children have of ANSS and give them a good time, ANSS is not a place of pain and needles,” he explains. Charles Kayaga continues saying that ‘Christmas for Children’ is an important event organized every year since 6 years now. The children get a chance to get together in a nice environment away from the needles; they can play, dance, open their gifts, and do what children do best: in short, they can have fun. Fabrice Y., a 10 years old HIV-positive orphan, ‘Christmas for Children’ is an event he has been waiting for a long time. “I live with my auntie and normally we don’t celebrate Christmas. We go to church and then we stay home and watch TV, or sometimes we listen to the neighbors celebrating with their family. We can’t have a party because auntie has to pay for the rent and my school,” he says.

A marvelous gift

Jeanine K, Fabrice’s aunt, explains that it is a great event for children. “It is important for the kids to feel as normal as possible. It broke my heart when one day Fabrice came to me and said Christmas was the worst holiday for him because he feels lonely, and he can’t even play with his friends since everyone is home with their own families. No matter what we do, as tutors, we can only do so much,” says Jeanine, explaining that it is already very hard to make ends meet, and unfortunately celebrating Christmas is a luxury they can’t afford. “We have invited 300 children; it may seem like a lot, but it really isn’t…you have to know that there are over 2000 children in SWAA-Burundi(Society for Women Against Aids) and the same number in ANSS, and we’ve only taken 150 children from each association. We try our best but it’s hard to invite everyone. So, we take the age into consideration to try and narrow down the number of children we can invite. This year, the age range is 7 to 12 years old. We also consider the lifestyle, these children have a hard life in general, but some have a harder lifestyle and we try to invite those ones first,” explains Charles Kayaga. Charles Kayaga stresses that it is not easy to get the necessary funds for the event. Although they can benefit from companies like Interpetrol which has been quite generous this year, he wishes more children could participate to ‘Christmas for Children’ “the pick of the day is always when Santa Claus distributes the gifts. It would be great to make more children happy.”