With a wide smile Beatrice M.* says that she lives by the motto “life is short and beautiful — live it to the full.” The 20-year-old, HIV-positive mother refuses to be defeated by her new circumstances.
At the Garoua Regional Hospital’s Paediatric Feeding Centre in northern Cameroon, Aicha Ahidjo* is relieved to hear that her one-year-old son will survive. The child was suffering from chronic malnutrition, and other children have died of it.
Marlyse Aboui, a 40-year-old nurse, has still not gotten over the astonishment she felt when she heard that Cameroon’s President Paul Biya had nominated her to the senate.