"Manizi lawyer and PUDEMO stalwart Dominic Mngomezulu is dead after a long illness."

I am stunned. The news comes as I am preparing to leave to report on the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa. I type the name of my old friend into a search engine to find a recent contact number for him. I'd hoped to visit him in neighboring Swaziland, a country where I'd taught high school 11 years earlier, after the conference. Instead, this brief article from a Swaziland newspaper appears at the top of the screen, announcing his death two years earlier. No cause is listed.

In shock, I e-mail Brenda, a Canadian friend who still lives in Swaziland. Her reply comes swiftly: Yes, she had heard of his death. So sad; it was AIDS.

But how was this possible? He was straight, highly educated, more enthralled with politics than women. Then I do a Web search on AIDS in Swaziland, and a whole new reality of a country I thought I knew comes up on the screen.

Swaziland is one of the countries worst affected by AIDS in the world. As many as one-third of its young adults are infected. And the rate of infection is rising with depressing speed: From 1997 to 1999 alone it jumped from 26 to 32 percent. Life expectancy has dropped more by than 13 years since 1992, and is now at a low of 47. Three out of every four Swazi deaths are from AIDS. And according to UNICEF, over the next decade and a half, as many as 40,000 Swazis will die each year of AIDS. This gentle country of fewer than a million inhabitants was crumbling.

The next week I'm attending the AIDS conference, whose slogan is "Break the Silence," and I learn more about the dire situation in southern Africa. Two-thirds of the world's more than 40 million AIDS cases are in Africa, most of those in the sub-Sahara. Sixteen thousand Africans are infected with HIV each day. One in 10 African children is an AIDS orphan, and many of them will end up dying of AIDS themselves. And if this sounds bad, the conference presenters repeatedly emphasize, wait a year or two, or God forbid 10, because things are only going to get worse.

The numbers overwhelm me. They are almost impossible to comprehend. But the news of Dominic's death gives some small, personal meaning to this horrendous loss of human life and potential. I keep him in my mind while I'm doing the math.

Then halfway through the conference something strange happens. Brenda reaches me again, this time by phone. She tells me she has good news about Dominic. My heart races. Perhaps the article was a mistake; perhaps he is still alive ...

"He didn't die of AIDS," Brenda tells me excitedly as I catch my breath. "Yesterday I bumped into a friend who knew him quite well and who told me he died of sugar diabetes. Undiagnosed."

Brenda pauses. "So that's good news, isn't it?"

For a moment I can't answer. Good news? He's still dead. But Brenda seems to think so, albeit hesitantly. I can hardly blame her. Who, after all, would choose AIDS as a way to die? But the relief in her voice isn't just because Dominic avoided an especially cruel illness, I think. It's because more than 15 years into the epidemic, AIDS is still the most shameful thing on earth to die of.

I'll go back to Swaziland, I decide. After only a few days at the conference, I'm already tired of hearing about the devastation. I'm tired of learning more atrocious statistics that I can't possibly comprehend. I need to see the effects of AIDS for myself and in a place I knew before AIDS strangled its people in a deadly grip. And, I realize, I need to find Dominic's children. He was the sole breadwinner for his large, extended family and they undoubtedly need some financial help. If, as was discussed so much at the conference, we all need to do something now, his children are the place to start for me.

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My friend Brenda picks me up at the airport. We head into the rural expanse of the north, the shrubby hills gradually leveling off to a steady, swaying sea of sugar cane. Swaziland is a nation slightly smaller than New Jersey, surrounded by Mozambique to the north and South Africa everywhere else. It's a conservative country that takes its traditions very seriously. One of the worst insults a Swazi can make is to accuse another of "un-Swazi" behavior. Polygamy is perhaps its most sacred tradition and is still widely practiced. Swaziland is also one of the few remaining monarchies in Africa, and King Mswati III, barely in his 30s, has just named his eighth wife. His father, King Sobhuza II, had 80 wives by the time he died and fathered more than 100 children.

My friend Dominic was a charming mixture of Swazi tradition and astute political awareness. He was raised, like all other rural Swazi children, on a homestead with several mothers and dozens of siblings. But he was also committed to bringing change to his country. He and a small group of friends formed the core of the democratic movement in Swaziland, and most of his adult life was dedicated to the struggle.

As we drive, Brenda tells me that she has arranged a meeting tomorrow with a relative of Dominic's who knows the whereabouts of all his children. Not only that, Brenda says, but this relative also has some intriguing news about his death.