ABOUT 20% OF AFRICA'S CHILDREN DIE BEFORE THE AGE OF FIVE

Go to any village in Africa, and you will find dozens of little children playing with one another in the dust. Looking over them in the shade will be the grandmothers or other elders, ready to intervene when things get out of hand. If a child is hurt in the squabbles that inevitably arise, they run to soothing arms of their grandmothers. But war, AIDS, famine have brought to Africa an entirely new concept, children with no family members, no blood relatives, no extended family members. No elders to care for them, they are lost and bereft in a cruel world, and no one seems to care.