The USA River DREAM centre is continuing to organise opportunities for meetings in the surrounding villages and workplaces in an effort to reach those who remain unaware of the possibility of an effective cure for AIDS, or rather, those who hide their illness through fear of the stigma it carries.

The most recent meeting was held in two great flower-growing complexes, well-known in Arusha because they export their flowers to Europe too. More than 2000 workers are employed in the complexes’ enormous greenhouses.

The meeting was structured in two appointments and was attended by approximately 500 of the younger workers who took advantage of their lunch break to come and listen to the DREAM operators present the programme and to ask many questions.

At the beginning of the meeting, their faces were serious and worried, but after listening to various people tell their stories many of them smiled and expressed their gratitude.

What emerged was a mixture of lack of knowledge about AIDS and a rather naïve faith in traditional practices, a taking refuge in religion.

With no intention of wanting to judge these attitudes, which at least help to exorcise evil and ward off desperation, the DREAM operators insisted at length on both the reality of the illness and that of the cure.

A cure which aims not only to provide a concrete answer to frailty and suffering but at the same time wants to offer a more complex opportunity for human and social rebirth.