“A Daughter's Journey" is a series of blog posts by Tracy Jarrett, a GlobalPost/Kaiser Family Foundation global health reporting fellow. Tracy is traveling from her hometown, Chicago, to Cape Town, South Africa as part of a Special Report entitled "AIDS: A Turning Point.” AIDS took her mother's life when she was five years old.

CAPE TOWN—The ladies, as they have come to be known, arrive to work by 9:00 every morning. Their office is an old mini bus (taxi) station in the center of Langa township. The dilapidated white building is dark inside; a table lined with blue plastic chairs is set up by the window, and two men sit in a small office behind security glass. Resembling a YMCA-meets-doctor’s office, this station has housed the Langa Action Community AIDS Program (L.A.C.A.P.) for seven years.

CAPE TOWN –– Margaret Hans, 25, shuffles to the door of her simple but immaculate two-room township home. Thin and with drawn facial features, she is still weak from tuberculosis - the all-too-familiar opportunistic scourge that piggy-backs on the South African HIV epidemic. It’s Tuesday, which means that community care worker Goodness Henama, 26, is making her weekly visit. Today, Hans has someone to talk to. In any country, quality of life is all in the detail. But in South Africa, the bigger picture is dominant: as of 2009, 5.6 million people were living with HIV, and the country has been rushing to catch up on the roll out of anti-retroviral drugs and coping with the sheer social impact of 1.9 million orphans due to AIDS. How, then, is there time to listen to Margaret?