Go well Mildred

People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care...about them

In 1999, I had the pleasure of working in Lusaka with a Zambian journalist called Mildred Mpundu. I recently heard that she passed away on 13th November this year. The song on the right is dedicated to Mildred, so you might like to listen to it while reading this.

My memories of Mildred had faded over time, but the message from Henry, another colleague in Zambia, brought them flooding back. It was September 1999, and we had an idea that individuals were best placed to write about the realities of HIV themselves - something so important should not be left to the big institutions who otherwise were still telling us what was going on and what should be done. We did not really know how it was going to work, but if we could just find some capable and dedicated individuals..... enter Mildred.

That year, the African AIDS conference (ICASA) was being held in Lusaka, Mildred's home town. Along with three other people, Mildred was part of the first ever 'Key Correspondent Team' we brought together for such an event. Manju Chatani from Ghana came to Lusaka to support the team with me, and the other KCs at the conference were Omololu Falobi (who went on to found Journalists Against AIDS in Nigeria), Koudaogo Ouedraogo (from the national TB programme in Burkina Faso), and Cecilia Rachier (an HIV counsellor from Nairobi, Kenya).

L2R: Manju , me, Mildred, Omolulu, Cecilia and Koudaogo

Here is how Mildred described her involvement at the time:

"As a journalist working with AF-AIDS and a daily newspaper in Zambia, the challenge that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has created in my life is immense. I have heard, seen and felt it in those far away and close to me. Hence my interest in contributing to the fight against this ugly "monster." Through pen and paper I hope I can help comfort or save a soul from this disease."

"People don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care...about them."

That left an impression then, but in light of Mildred's own subsequent life with HIV, these words mean a thousand times more to me now.

She was certainly one of the quietest KCs in that first team, and her writing during and after the conference was sharply focused on what HIV meant to individuals: One story about a young woman who thought she was infected with HIV by her teacher; another about the realities of eating well for people with HIV; even when she wrote about the Zambian government's response to the epidemic, she came at it from an angle of what they weren't doing to protect the well being of individual ministers.

When I read her work again today, I realise that they could just as well have been written yesterday as in 1999.

Mildred, through pen and paper (ok, keyboard) your voice was indeed heard loud and clear throughout Zambia, Africa and the world. You helped guide us all in those early years of HDN, and what we saw then helped hundreds of others to follow and also to speak their world.

Go well Mildred, and keep smiling.

A memorable moment from 1999: Omolulu, Manju and Mildred
are astonished that the Zimbabwean health minister would say
such a thing about Bill Clinton's sexual exploits!