Reviews Independent:
HIV/ Aids has enough experts," the Salvation Army told BBC journalist Brook as it sent him on this task. "We just want someone to go and see and find the stories." So he sets out, with two young children in tow, to the scummiest parts of India, Africa and China. And tell them he does, with a light, deft touch. Without a trace of mawkishness or sentimentality, Brook sets it out straight - most movingly when his six-year-old daughter asks him, "What is a prostitute?" or his son wants to know why people commit genocide. "Remember to write my name somewhere," a dying man asks him. This he does, with heartbreaking simplicity.
Book Description
This book presents an extraordinary account of a nine-month journey made by the author and his family into some of the World's HIV/AIDS epicentres. Sent by the Salvation Army to bear witness to the work they were doing in response to the pandemic, Rhidian Brook, his wife and two children, follow a trail of devastation through communities still shattered and being broken by this disease: truck stop sex workers in Kenya, victims of rape in Rwanda, child-headed families in Soweto, children of prostitutes in India, farmers who sold blood for money in China. It is a remarkable journey among the infected and the affected through a world that, despite seeming on the brink of collapse, is being held together, not by power, politics, guns and money; but by small acts of kindness performed by unsung people choosing to live in hope.
"I can’t pretend: the world we saw on this journey really was in terrible shape. But the further we travelled the more we saw how the hidden, unsung acts of neighbours in forgotten communities seemed to be making the difference between hope and despair – between living and dying. Whenever a situation seemed close to overwhelming we would encounter stories of amazing grace, and hope; small stories that slowly accumulated into being The Big Story."
I cannot recommend it enough!!
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