A little odd, but still pretty cool. I had gone to the internet café to submit my last article, and check a few emails. I had been out in the morning, so had a shower and grabbed a T-shirt and headed down.

So I was sitting there, pretty happy in my own little electronic world when a woman asked me what I had to do with loveLife. Now I had pulled on my loveLife T-shirt as it was lying there, I hadn’t worn it for any purpose. So I got chatting to her, she worked for loveLife and had for a while. So we talked about HIV/AIDS, challenges that needed facing, positives and negatives of loveLife. Then I found out she was a paediatrician, so I talked about medical careers, and how she had ended up working for loveLife. It was then I found out that she used to work for the UN, and had at one point worked for Kofi Annan. Pretty cool.

But the funniest thing was that she was really encouraging about medical careers in international health, and that she acknowledged there was a renewed interest in international affairs. It was also really humbling to speak with her, not because of the things that she had done, but her attitude. She had changed her job from working for the UN to loveLife because she wanted to feel that she was making a difference in people’s lives. It was clear that her presence in South Africa, and in Africa in general was not as a tourist, but she felt very passionately about her job. She was immersed in the world of AIDS prevention and treatment. That is what humbled me. Her absolute commitment to stopping AIDS before it is too late. Not a half-hearted approach. Throwing herself into the fray, eyes open, knowing the size of the problem, knowing the difficulties, without a career structure, without lots of money, but just because of her love for the people she was helping.