Tastic Rice, Poverty, and HIV/Aids

So it was bound to come up. Unless you dont read the news or watch tv, you should already know Africa has huge problems with poverty and HIV/Aids. I saw this add the other day for rice and found it unusually profound. Thanks to a stable government and strong economy, Botswana has recently become known as the "Mirracle of Africa." However, Botswana is severely plagued by both HIV/Aids and poverty. In Botswana, unemployment ranges from 27-40% and in rural areas more than 62% of the population lives below the poverty line. In comparison with the almighty United States, over 40% of the population lives off less than a dollar a day. Meanwhile, HIV/Aids daily becomes a bigger and bigger problem. It's estimated around 33% of the population is HIV positive, causing the overall life expectancy to drop to just above 40 years (When I tell people I'm 21, some say im already an old man). While in rural Manyana, there were as many as 3 funerals a week. These deaths were usually explained to me as the result of the "long sickness". Today, the government spends around 52% of its total budget on HIV/Aids prevention alone.

The ad above is for Tastic Rice, and shows elegantly dressed African family eating huge bowls of rice on an expensive dinning room table. If you look below the billboard, there is a display of tombstones for sale, of various prices, sizes, and styles. I think this images is a haunting metaphore for Botswana. We have a picture of wealth and afluency over the collection of graves below. Botswana has both a promising future and a harsh reality it needs to face. No one is sure what will happen.