African and Canadian grandmothers meet in Manzini, Swaziland at the first African Grandmothers Gathering on May 6, 2010. (Kristina Laukkanen)

Submitted by Heather Keith

I am one of 42 grandmothers who spent Mother's Day in a van driving from Swaziland to Johannesburg after a most amazing gathering in Manzini, Swaziland, with 500 African grandmothers. The African grandmothers told us their stories of living with HIV/AIDS, of watching their children die with the disease and of the struggles to bring up their grandchildren.

There were 12 countries represented at the gathering and the stories of grandmothers from Rwanda are very different from those from Zimbabwe and those from Uganda. These ladies shared their stories and most of all learned from each other. There are some projects being funded by the Stephen Lewis Foundation that are breathtaking in their simplicity but fantastically beneficial to the grandmothers.

I heard the story of "sack gardens," an ingenious method of growing food in 100-kilogram bags that have a central core of small stones surrounded by a mix of soil and manure.

Holes are poked in the sack, seeds are planted, the crops are watered by the central core, and voila: a garden on a front porch that doesn't require tilling, or walking miles to care for. I heard another story of "table credit," where women get together, pool whatever small amount of cash they have, negotiate what to buy to produce money, make profit on their project and do it all over again every month, building their resources.

I also heard stories of the grandmothers trying to scrape together money to send the children to school. The first two grades are free, after that, the grandmothers have to pay the school fees, plus buy uniforms and shoes for the children. The schools have 100 or more children in each classroom.

I met one grandmother of 78 who had just taken another grandmother under her wing, as well as her four grandchildren she was unable to care for. I asked her if she was able to do projects that brought her money. She told me she is too tired and too old to do this. And she is right.

On our long 5½-hour bus ride we Canadian grandmothers talked about our experiences and how we will find enough money to support these women. We missed Mother's Day with our families but created wonderful bonds with the many Canadian grandmothers and we will all work to help our African sisters.

Before we left Manzini we all shared breakfast and as we boarded our buses for African cities and for Johannesburg, we Canadians gathered to sing a simple song. We had sung this song at the cultural evening and the wonderful Stephen Lewis Foundation staff had tears in their eyes.

They are all young, one of them just celebrated her 30th birthday, and they said they did not know the song. It was "We shall overcome," but we changed the words to, "We shall turn the tide."