Thembi's AIDS Diary: A Year in the Life of a South African Teenager

“AIDS is not going to bring me down; it’s only something that is inside my blood. Outside I’ll be the boss.” So speaks Thembi Ngubane, a 19-year old South African living with AIDS. Join us as she shares her AIDS diary describing her day-to-day struggle with the disease. Thembi is joined by noted actresses and activists Roma Maffia (Nip/Tuck) and Jurnee Smollett (Eve’s Bayou, Roll Bounce).

Monday, May 01, 2006
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Covel Commons Grand Horizon Ballroom
330 De Neve Drive
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

• Program begins promptly at 7 PM
• Reception and art exhibit featuring artwork about HIV/AIDS created and donated by UCLA students immediately follows the program

Thembi Ngubane will be in attendance, along with actresses and activists

• Roma Maffia (Nip/Tuck, In the Nick of Time, Profiler)
• Jurnee Smollett (Eve's Bayou, Roll Bounce, Wanda at Large)

Friends of Treatment Action Campaign, Artists for a New South Africa (ANSA), Radio Diaries of NPR, and the UCLA African Studies Center present a special evening with Thembi Ngubane and special guests Roma Maffia Jurnee Smollett.  Thembi will discuss her AIDS diary project and excerpts from her audio diary will be played during her talk.

For the past year, Thembi has carried around a tape recorder and recorded an audio diary for National Public Radio of her struggle to live with AIDS.  With poetic insight and humor, Thembi has captured the small moments that help tell a larger story: telling her father that she has AIDS; a visit to the township clinic to apply for life-saving drugs; being ostracized by neighbors and friends as they slowly learn her status; a moment of quiet, late-night dancing at home with her boyfriend. Thembi’s AIDS Diary was broadcast April 19th on NPR’s All Things Considered, which attracts a weekly audience of 11.4 million people on 629 public radio stations across the country.

Thembi’s AIDS Diary will provide an intimate portrait of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, uncovering the humanity buried under a mountain of statistics.  “AIDS is not going to bring me down,” Thembi said, “it’s only something that is inside my blood. Outside I’ll be the boss.”

Cost : Free and open to the public; parking is available for $8. Ask for parking lot SH or DD at the parking kiosk at Westwood Blvd. & Charles E. Young Drive

For more information please contact:

Friends of Treatment Action Campaign or Artists for a New South Africa

Baylee DeCastro at bdecastr@ucla.edu or Sharon Gelman at sharon@ansafrica.org

www.ansa.org

Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, Darfur Action Committee, Friends of Treatment Action Campaign, Artists for a New South Africa, Radio Diaries of NPR, Latin American Students Association, Oxfam, Amnesty International, International Institute Student Association, Polaris Project, Student Coalition for Marriage Equality, UNICEF, Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, Office of Residential Life, AIDS Awareness Committee of the Student Welfare Commission, LGBT Resource Center, The Clothesline Project, Queer Alliance, queerXgirl, USAC President's Office, American Red Cross