Tags: widow

Sibongile shares her story of what she and her children go through after her husband died. Inheritance laws in Swaziland exclude women, and Sibongile's story addresses this inequity. She says, "I want to counsel HIV+ women like me. This is in my heart."

Lucia loses her husband and then her daughter to AIDS. When her husband dies, her inlaws try to take away her home and all her possessions, and remarry her to her brother-in-law, according to Shona tradition. When her daughter falls ill no one offers to help her care for her. Eventually Lucia finds solace and hope in her church activities, where she counsels others in her same situation.

As a young child living with her Auntie, Beauty knew what she wanted in life: to be a good mother and marry a man who wasn't like her own father. Beauty tells the story of meeting her ideal husband and having a family together. But things changed when her husband became HIV positive and eventually died, leaving her to raise her children and negotiate with her inlaws, all while mourning her husband's death and dealing with her own HIV positive status.