As the rooster crows and the sun rises over the horizon, a mother in Africa knows it is time to wake up and start her day. She wakes up her children and lets them know the day has begun and it is time to start their chores. In America we learn that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but in Africa any meal the family can get is important. They begin their chores on an empty stomach, a common practice for this family of five since their father died last year from AIDS. The mother, earning less than a dollar a day, is barely able to feed her four children and she herself almost never has anything to eat (Hunter 28). Her children see her growing thinner and thinner as her health deteriorates at a rapid rate. She also is dying of AIDS and will most likely not live another six months. When she dies, her four children will be left alone to fend for themselves on the harsh and unforgiving streets of Africa. Most of them will die the same way their mother and father died if starvation and a host of many other diseases do not get to them first. This is the face of AIDS in Africa. These problems are all too common among households in Africa where the average life expectancy has dropped from sixty-five to thirty-nine in the last ten years (CNN 1). With women dying off at such alarming rates, what happens to the children and the family structure in Africa and what factors are contributing to the rapid spread of AIDS among African women?
             AIDS is an acronym for autoimmune deficiency disease. It is a disease that disables the immune system leaving the infected person open to catching any type disease. The entire world is feeling the affects of AIDS, but no place has been hit harder than sub-Saharan Africa which now accounts for sixty-seven percent of the total number of infections worldwide (Hunt 354). There are two main factors why African women are feeling the brunt of this percentage, accounting for fifty-four perce...