The other venue

Stars from Bono to Rick Warren are throwing the spotlight on millions of HIV-related deaths. But the frontier is not onstage, it's in African villages where small groups are saving lives and finding enthusiastic support for their ministry evangelism | Marvin Olasky, Susan Olasky

First in a series by Marvin & Susan Olasky in Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa

Hundreds of millions watched on television the July 2 Live8 concerts. U2, Sting, Pink Floyd, REM, Elton John, Paul McCartney and others all sang their hearts out, as scheduled, for African debt relief (see "Whose jubilee?", June 25). • Thousands of miles south, a smaller concert went unnoticed. In late June in the village of Loskop four hours east of Johannesburg, eight boys and girls ages 13 to 18, standing in a circle in a cold, dimly lit room, sang lines from a Ladysmith Black Mombazo song now popular across South Africa: "AIDS killed my father, AIDS killed my mother, AIDS is killing Africa." One singer ran his finger across his throat. Others stomped their feet on the cement floor. Then Rob Smith, the 47-year-old, wispy-bearded head of the Agathos Foundation—agathos is Greek for "good"—told the eight about the "need to talk about sex. We need to talk about it openly so we can see what Jesus says about sex and about our bodies. Then we relate that to the AIDS crisis."