AHMED Kasawala doesn’t know the warmth of his mother’s embrace; she died before he turned two, leaving him to the frail arms of his grandmother.

“I pray to Allah everyday to forgive us. Miriam was a good girl. I think she got it from the blood they gave her when she was in hospital,” says the elderly. Kasawala, groping for some way to excuse a condition that carries so much stigma: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS.

In 2007, an estimated 33.2 million people lived with the disease worldwide, and it killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children, according to UNAIDS.

Regardless of how she contracted the HIV virus that causes AIDS, Miriam, 24, left behind three children.

“I don’t know how we will live once my eyes fail me,” says the grandmother, adding that she feel bad she does not have the energy to play with the three year old. “I am alive and my daughter is dead. Why should the old survive and the young die? The world is turned upside down. It is against nature. Instead of my child taking care of me, I watched her die, and now I don’t know how to take care of her child. His sisters are young, they cook, but they can barely care for themselves.”

World AIDS Day, which falls on December 1, offers a day of reflection on the chilling statistic that outlines the plight of children like Ahmed and his sisters. Africa is one of the most AIDS- ravaged regions of the world. Around 50 to 60 percent of orphans in Malawi, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe currently live with their grandparents, according to Help Age International. In Malawi alone about 13 percent of the 7.3 million children under the age of 18 have lost their parents, mainly as a result of AIDS. Often these children are left to siblings. If they are lucky, they may find themselves in the care of loving but weak grandparents,

Driving from Lillongwe to Lake Malawi, via Dedza, one sees village after village is a study in abject poverty. If a tin roof tops a wooden home, it’s a sign of prosperity. For the rest, roofs are made from dried grass. Education is a distant luxury here. Food is a more prescient problem.

One foreign aid worker said she told kids about her love for butterflies, and then asked them what their favorite thing was. “It was so sad,” she said. “They all replied ‘seema’ (a mixture of maize, cornflour and water most rural communities eat as a staple, and all too often the only food available). They cannot get their minds off food, how can we expect them to think of school when there is a food crisis here?”

When a school a few kilometers from Monkey Bay announced a village feast, about 400 children showed up, along with about 100 elders. Young adults in the age group of 20 to 40 were conspicuously absent as the children lined up at a distribution center for beans and maize. AIDS had taken them from this earth. A foreign human rights worker said she was appalled by the amount of babies she saw strapped to the back of 10-year-olds.

A local resident who employs servants from the village says she sees the impact of AIDS all the time: Her work force has diminished over the last few months. A teacher complained that whenever there is a funeral in the village, the whole school skips class to attend. According to him the funerals occur more frequently than the fragile socio economic balance of rural Malawi can handle.

“We are mostly rural. Who is left to earn?” he asks. “Who is going to tell the children to go to school?”

According to UNAIDS, about 11.9 percent of the adult population in Malawi were living with HIV at the beginning of 2008.

A 2003 study by the development ministry and the University of Malawi noted that 83 percent of the population, particularly in rural areas, “has no form of social protection. They are income insecure. There is therefore a need for a non-contributory pension as a significant component of old age income security.”

The government has launched a poverty-relief scheme, aimed at the poorest 10 percent of households. They piloted the program in July 2006 in Mchinji District, about 100km north of the capital, Lilongwe, where 3,094 people were provided monthly cash transfers that benefited about 14,332 people.

The fact that elderly people with young dependents headed these households with no household members between the ages of 19 and 64 is a clear indication of the impact AIDS has had on Malawi’s family composition.