AIDS
As a science writer, I don’t have to wear emotional armor very often. Before I went to Zimbabwe for a visit, I had talked to other reporters (46) . All told me to get prepared for the orphans, many of whom had caught the AIDS virus from their mothers and the strong desire to make everything all right for them.
Then again, nothing could have prepared me for the visit to creche (育婴堂) for AIDS orphans in Harare, where one sick, smiling four-year-old boy tried to keep up with the other kids playing ring-around-the-rosy but (47) , or meeting a 25-year-old unmarried girl who cared for her nephew (48) . The boy who called his aunt "Mama" was too weak even to take the piece of banana I offered.
Meanwhile photo journalist Karin Retief was visiting a room at the hospice (济贫院 ) (49) . At first she did not see anyone on the bed and was about to say he must be elsewhere, when suddenly she spotted his tiny arm in the air, his body lost in the folds of the bedclothes.
Recently Karin wrote to me that she had been able to keep our assignment from taking too great an emotional suffering at the time. " (50) , could I mourn the people I met", she continued. "I sat in church and wanted to ask the priest to pray for the people with AIDS in Zimbabwe and all over the world. Then all the people’s faces, pain and suffering became so real, I could not get the words out. I broke down and cried and cried for them".
A. where she had been told a particularly sweet orphan boy stayed
B. who had spent time in Africa
C. Only when I got back about a week later
D. even though her only income was from growing and selling a few vegetables at the local market
E. was so weak he kept falling to the floor
F. while we were visiting the orphans