In the end, people always ask me if moving to Selma from the metro-Atlanta area is a culture shock. Citizens of Selma also ask that question just expecting me to say that Selma is so vastly different from the area where I am from. The truth is I don’t find it that different. The people are welcoming, everyone smiles and waves and there is rich Southern History around every corner. It is always easy for me to answer no, “It’s not a culture shock,” and I love their reaction when I tell them I actually love living here and find it to be a nice place. Sure, we don’t have a Target or a Starbucks, but I guess not having a tall, Salted Caramel Mocha is something I will have to learn to live without considering the closest Starbucks is 45 minutes away.

But there is one difference from the area I grew up in and where I reside now. And that difference terrifies me and makes me uneasy.

I was so blessed and fortunate to grow up in Cobb County Georgia, a county that holds the top two percent of all the wealth in the world. Poverty was something I witnessed on mission trips to foreign countries, but I never noticed poverty around me where I lived. One thing I have come to learn in the last few months is that with poverty, comes disease.

This week I had the opportunity to attend an HIV seminar and learned the scary truth about how many cases of HIV and AIDS are in our area. There are more than 550 cases that are reported, and that is just the reported cases; who knows how many people do not yet know of their infection?

This is something that I am not used to. But my prayer is that none of us find this as something normal, something ordinary. I hope it makes everyone just as uncomfortable as I am.

I am so proud to be a citizen of Selma, but I am not proud of the poverty and the disease. But I have also come to learn in the last several months that there are so many reasons to take heart and have hope about this plaguing problem in our beloved Selma.

There are workers with the Alabama Health Department and Selma AIR, organizations that combat AIDS, who are passionate about eliminating the virus from our area. They work daily offering free HIV and AIDS testing to citizens as well as educate others about HIV.

Cedric Wherry, the education specialist with Selma AIR, told me that the reason HIV is so prevalent in our area is because of the great levels of poverty and the bad shape of the economy. People will do things, anything really, to get drugs or other favors through intercourse.

This is making HIV spread at alarming levels and it has to be stopped.

This is not a problem I grew up with next door, but it is a problem that I feel we all need to take part in the solution. It might be easy for us to put ourselves in a bubble and not notice problems like HIV in our churches, in our schools and even in our families. But let’s recognize this as an epidemic in our city and then work towards eliminating it.