In most of the mud-brick houses perched above the starkly beautiful gorges of the Tugela River, someone is dying. In one house, a truck driver stretches his bony legs on a mattress; he has come home from Johannesburg to die. Just down the dirt road, a thin young man lives with his mother and sister in a single room. They own nothing, not even a chicken. The young man has not yet told his sister that he has AIDS. This is the province of KwaZulu-Natal, epicenter of South Africa's epidemic, where HIV positive rates are estimated at more than 30 percent.