Africa: Marking World AIDS Day Poetically · Global Voices
Njeri Wangari

positive…
the status of my H.I.V
negative…
your attitude towards me
nonchalant…
is how I choose to be
pretenders…
you allegedly sympathize with me
true colors…
you show them when I turn my back
pity…
I surely do not need it right now
life…
I am full of it and I am living
understanding…
I have a condition like anyone else
positive…
the status of my attitude
determination…
is filled inside of me
oh yes..
I have the will to live
I am positive…
in every aspect
of the word!
All Rights Reserved.
Mike Kwambo
This is a poem that was written by Mike Kwambo a poet member of Mstari Wa Nne poetry group based in Nairobi, Kenya and a sports blogger. The poem was written  and posted on the Mstari  Wa Nne facebook page on 1st December 2009 in marking World AIDS Day, a day that was celebrated everywhere in the world with a renewed message of hope to the infected and the affected as well.
Ashlee’s South African Blog too wrote a poem on HIV and AIDS. This is what she says about the poem, which follows below:
“This poem is about HIV an AIDS. I wrote this poem to make people realise that life is not all about sex and all that. But to acknowledge that many people have died of HIV and AIDS and that it many children have been left alone to sometimes take care of their families, teenagers and brothers. HIV is a very out in the open disease that people have to protect themselves from. They say abstinence is a better way to increase a better future of a HIV free generation. All I am saying is, don’t let things that are being said about you offend you. Just take it and put it into a better understanding and let go of it. And don’t let your past determine what you are bound to be in the future.”
And the Nation Shall Die
As I fall to the night
I hear a cry
A cry of a nation
She’s gone
What has become of our nation?
For an orphan has been left
Left to fend for itself
Too many promises
More talk
Less work
We were friends
You know my status
You run away
You tell the nation
They say ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed.’
I saw a future, a bright future
But it never came
I saw a great success; success that disappeared
I saw a nation, a beautiful nation
Which turned me into a slave
A beautiful nation that became so cruel
It turned me into a victim
And the nation shall die
It shall die in the night
For a disease that eats you alive has risen
And the nation shall die
All Rights Reserved
A young girl living in the Sihawukelwe Lauren Children's Home for AIDS Orphans  in South Africa performs a  poem on HIV/AIDS filmed in the Umzinyahi Village near Durban, South Africa.
Young children from Kenya performed the poem ‘Aids is My name’ in the video below shot for the Global Health Council
On my own blog Kenyan Poet, a poem gives the initials A.I.D.S. a whole new meaning, “Africa's Ignorance of A Dying Society” (AIDS)
I have always thought that scientists are the most bright people
Most learned, most elite, most Einstein
Staining our bleached minds with the power foam
Performing studies, research and forming powerful opinions
About matters of matter, anti matter, apples and samples
My thoughts on History’s Invented Views (HIV) have been molded by them
But no matter how much I want to agree with them on the cause
Like Newton's scoffers, I vehemently ridicule this theory.
Once upon a time, there was a man
The man was walking in the forest one day
When he came upon a monkey
When the man saw the monkey,
He thought to himself,
“Now that monkey looks sexy”
“I bet its female”
And so he went closer,
And sure enough, the monkey was a she
A smirk cut right across his face
A bright bulb light his dark black brain
His black thoughts went on over drive
“Hey monkey, what do u say, me and you…………….”
The rest as they say is HIVstory, the HIV story
Read the rest of the poem here