If Madonna wants advice on adopting an AIDS orphan, she could do worse than turn to 13-year-old Caroline Chileka. The US pop diva jetted out of Malawi early Friday after being granted an interim order to adopt a one-year-old boy from the impoverished south-east African country, witnesses said.
The singer flew out in the early hours of the morning from the administrative capital Lilongwe where a judge had earlier granted her an 18-month interim adoption order which allows her to take the child named as David Banda out of the country.
But while Madonna ponders how to juggle her career with mothering an orphan, Caroline has already had to adapt her lifestyle to look after her four brothers and sisters following their parents' death from AIDS.
The schoolgirl, who comes from the southern Mwanza province, is one of 700,000 youngsters in Malawi who have been left orphans by the disease which has ravaged so much of southern Africa. The sheer scale of the pandemic, which has left 14.2 percent of Malawi's 13 million population infected with HIV, means that the tradition of extended families taking in orphans is slowly collapsing.
The escalating death toll means that many of the oldest children in families have been forced to take on the mantle as head of the household long before their childhoods should have come to an end. It is a burden many people would be crushed by, but Caroline is determined not to be daunted by the role that has been thrust upon her and not allow it to thwart her ambition to succeed at school.
With help from the Red Cross, Caroline is able to put food on the table each day for the family of five, but also she provides for her siblings in other ways. "I am trying to live positively for my own sake and that of my two brothers and two sisters," she says.
"I do odd jobs for my neighbours so that I can buy books for me and my siblings. Sometimes they will also give me something to eat." Despite the fact that Caroline has broad shoulders, carers are aware that she and others like her still need some time when they can enjoy their childhood and escape the burdens that have been thrust upon them.
Under a scheme set up by the Malawian Red Cross Society, Caroline attends after-school sessions where exercises designed to build up levels of self-reliance are combined with singing and music lessons with instruments made out of old boxes and scrap metal.
"Singing in my band helps me forget about the problems at home," Caroline said as she took a break from her chores outside the family's mud hut home. According to Red Cross officials, youngsters such as Caroline can often end up marrying as young as 14 in a bid to escape poverty.
Dr Mukesh Kapila, an International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies official with a specific mandate to combat AIDS, said Caroline's plight was a common one.
"It means we need to double our efforts. We need more aid, both financial and in volunteers. We need to make sure that every child, including Caroline, has access to programmes that can help them live better," he added. Kapila said it was vital that the whole of sub-Saharan Africa work together to come up with projects to help the youngsters.
"It is a threat to stability, the more reason why governments should double their efforts and work for solutions and not expect it to land in their laps. HIV is now everyone's business." In the meantime, Caroline is left to cope with the high wire act of keeping up at school and caring for her siblings. "It is bad at times because I am unable to concentrate at school," she says. "I am scared that the conditions under which I am living may ruin my future and I might end up dropping out of school."
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