Quand on a terminé sa toilette du matin, il faut faire soigneusement la toilette de la planète – Eight patient encounters.

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1) She was six. She came in the room and gave me two thumbs up.
2) He was seven. He was given stickers for remembering the names of his meds, one on each hand, and, to protect them, he spent the remainder of the consultation (fifteen minutes) with his hands held upright, as if holding an invisible basketball.
3) He was sixteen. He had no family, at least none that claimed him. He was by himself at the clinic. He was not attending school. He asked if we could help him become a student again.
4) He was five. He spent the visit playfully chewing the edges of a Styrofoam cup, until there were about a hundred such pieces scattered around the floor around him.
5) She was nine. She was angry with her mom for delaying her visit with the doctor. (Mom had been next door refilling her own ARVs.) I reached out my hand for a high five. She frowned at me. I asked what was wrong. She said she was hungry. I gave her a cookie. She smiled, gave me a high five, then remembered she was cross and frowned again. I gave her another cookie. Her mood was thereafter cured. The virus that brought us together was not, but it was not detectible in her blood.
6) She was eight. “My last name means ‘little snake’ she explained. “The snake lives underground and is not a poisonous one. We only see it when we plow. It is a nice snake.” This marked the very first time I had heard an African compliment a snake.
7) He was five and named Prince, but his name was pronounced “Prin-see,” with an emphasis on the second syllable. When asked how he was, he said “Well, doctor, I am just fine.” His mother, in agreement, said, “Prin-cee is very well.”
8) She was eight. She looked four, maybe five. She had a thin face, with sunken cheeks. I asked her to draw a flower for me. She had drawn the same flower a year prior and I wanted to see how she was developing. She refused. “I want to draw a boy,” she insisted. She drew a boy holding a flower.

Because of the HIV medicines now available to these eight and tens of thousands of other African children, they have the opportunity to survive childhood...just like we did.

Isn’t that just wonderful?

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"For me, this is the loveliest and the saddest landscape in the world...I've drawn it one more time [below] to be sure you see it clearly. It's here that the little prince appeared on Earth, then disappeared. Look at this lanscape carefully to be sure of recognizing it, if you should travel to Africa someday, in the desert. And if you happen to pass by here, I beg you not to hurry past. Wait a little while, just under the star! Then if [a child comes to you], be kind! Don't let [him] go on being so sad: Send word immediately that he's come back..."
-The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry