a missing generation

I want to elaborate on the below-noted 43% HIV infection rate for 30-35 year olds here in Swaziland. This, along with the broader figure of 24% for all 15-45 year olds, represents a generational die-off: a huge hole in the demographic composition of the country. And while all age groups of a society play important roles in its functioning, this group is especially critical—these are the workers and innovators in an economy, the parents and breadwinners in an extended family, the emerging community leaders. So as the parents die, it is the grandparents who are left to raise the children, or else siblings oftentimes too young to earn income (child-headed households are all-too common). And with so many workers of the so-called “productive population” sick and/or dying, Swaziland’s economy greatly suffers, unable to produce even enough jobs for the trained and able-bodied (for example, Swaziland currently has throngs of trained yet unemployed teachers).
As one doctor from the Baylor Pediatric Clinic put it, it’s the grandmothers who are “holding this country together right now.” Because more and more, they’re the ones left with the increasingly difficult task of feeding the children on their extended homesteads. The other day Jamie and I visited the kitchen of our new friend, Make Dlamini (mother Dlamini), where a small crowd of little boys and girls played after having just eaten dinner. We asked how many mouths her kitchen fed. Her answer was startling: 23, including herself. Mostly toddlers and young kids—and not her own. She feeds them every single day with food prepared on a big wood-burning stove in a kitchen without electricity or running water—and without hesitation she invited us to come over for dinner when we get the chance.
The Baylor Clinic doctor’s observation is exactly right. Wonderful, hardworking, unflappable matriarchs are holding together the fabric of this paternalistic country. But of course, they are in increasingly short supply—Swaziland’s current life expectancy is around 36 years old.