scholarships to entice girls away from sexual arrangements. These scholarships would pay for the girls’ schooling. Unfortunately, the girls must be tested for virginity, which could ostracize those that have been raped or aren’t virgins. The program is also taking funding from another program that gives sewing machines to girls so that they can make a living for themselves. Uganda receives eight million dollars a year from the United States to promote abstinence programs for youth.

    Unfortunately, AIDS is not just a disease that is ravishing the continent. It is destroying lives and orphaning children. With so mane people dying, communities are feeling economic strain that they are hard pressed to recover from. People in Africa need more help than aid workers just telling them that they need to abstain from sex. Disease prevention isn’t the only solution; people need to know how to live with

    AIDS and how to go on after AIDS has taken someone from them.

    Prossy’s family is poor and overburdened with the eleven children living in one house. If aid workers had the funds to help people in their situation all the while teaching them how to prevent AIDS, Prossy wouldn’t have to make such a hard choice.

    Although her mother urges her to stay a while, Prossy wonders how her life can ever get better where she is. If only she knew that there were people out there that want to help her, she might have hope. She might see a better future. As it is now, she is looking grim. “I want to take a sugar daddy and go,” she sighs, “I need someone to care for me.”