Mpho and her 10 workers also have 40 more volunteer workers in some 78 nearby villages where support groups have been set up in most places. Everyone visits the hospice, from grannies to kids; there's a men's group too.

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Quite an extraordinary amount of work has been done by this 43-year old mother of five children. Last year she and her workers made 8,000 visits to families in the local villages - 'local' meaning an area of 17,000 square miles, mainly in very poor rural areas south of Pretoria.
Mpho explains how it all began.
"I quit my job six years ago through frustration at not being able to do enough. At the local hospital where I worked it was overcrowded; everyone was being discharged because we just couldn't cope, even if people were dying. I decided I had to do something outside of the hospital.
"I wanted to find out by going from village to village in my vicinity whether there would be a need for home-based help. It was a new concept then and I did it on a voluntary basis. But every person I encountered was for it!"
What did she find in these family homes, where HIV and Aids was an unwelcome guest?
"I came across, as I still do now, two types of scenarios in these village homes.
"One where a person is in the house and is left alone all day (this house is more of a tin house, corrugated-type shed construction you understand). A young adult, say 16 to 35 years old; the family is all out at work at labour jobs in local factories; the person is in a terminal state of Aids. People like this won't get treatment drugs - you only get treatment if you have an opportunistic infection. These people are terribly neglected.
"Then there's the second scenario: The sick person who is hidden away at the back of the house and has been rejected by the family. The family consists of about four or five immediate family. The rejected individual is put in the area with all the home rubbish like wheelbarrows, boxes, broken tools and fed like a sick dog. Food just left for them. Untouchable. This taboo still affects Aids patients. Stigma is rampant."
There are also families where parents have died from Aids run by young children themselves. These,

Mpho agrees are often the most disturbing.