PopMatters | Columns | Charles Leonard | Straight Outta Africa | Where AIDS Takes Away Your Name:

“The smell stung my throat as I entered the dreary hospital ward where my camera-person colleague and friend, John (not his real name), lay in bed. It was said he suffered from malaria. A few weeks earlier, he telephoned me to say that he was okay and he would be back at work soon. But then I got the message that he urgently needed me to come to one of Johannesburg’s large state hospitals. When I walked into his room, the smell was a mix of the usual hospital aromas; medication, cleaning agents, hospital food, humanity. But there was something else, too. A smell I didn’t know – it was sharp, and made my mouth and throat dry.”

The article talks how the cost and toll of AIDS in Southern Africa