Goats and Soda

editor's note

Dear readers,

This past week marked the first 100 days of the new Trump administration -- a time of unprecedented shakeups in the world of U.S. foreign aid.

We sent a team to Zambia to learn how people are being affected, focusing on those who are HIV-positive. One of their reports focuses on long-haul truckers, who have a high rate of infection, and a Zambian man who made sure they get their medications to suppress the virus -- until U.S. cuts took his job away. 

Geoffrey Chanda says each time his phone rings he worries it's a former client who's without HIV pills and now ill.

On top of that, he says, now he worries for himself too — and his six children. Without his job, he's struggling to pay for food for his family. "[We are] still starving with hunger," he texted this week.

Read the story here.

This week we also published an Instagram reel that features some of the people now having difficulty getting their HIV medications -- a mom of four, a house painter and a 10-year-old girl.


Marc Silver,
Editor, Goats and Soda

award winner

A prize for our story: Women who are blind play a critical role in identifying possible breast cancers
This week, the American Association for Cancer Research presented awards to nine journalists, including regular Goats and Soda contributor Kamala Thiagarajan, who was honored for her 2024 story on a program that trains women in India who are visually impaired to do breast exams.

Thiagarajan told us that the women were overjoyed that their voices and stories were being heard around the world -- and that the number of women trained to do this work in India has nearly doubled to 35 since the story published.

She recalled how one of the women she interviewed broke down mid-conversation as they thought of this life-changing vocation in a country where navigating the roads of India, even for those with sight, can be challenging. Meenakshi Gupta (pictured above) told her: "We've come a long way, and in helping others, we've helped ourselves." 

history

A vanished kingdom comes alive in the songs of griots and a new archaeological dig
The legendary west African kingdom of Kaabu has long been memorialized in the songs and stories of griots. That's inspired archaeologists to excavate the kingdom's capital.