Ray Suarez is one of my favorite working journalists.  His pieces hit not just the factually meaty and difficult questions that need to be asked, but the heart and gut level issues that need to be exposed to the community as a whole.

He did a piece yesterday on HIV/AIDS orphans in South Africa that nearly ripped out my heart.

That’s usually a sign to me that it needs a wider airing, and I wanted to bring it to all of you today.  You can view it at right.

But Ray — in his usual, thorough, way did not leave it there.

He’s been doing a whole series on HIV/AIDS in Africa and its myriad complications, governmental and personal strains that is well worth your time. The extended interview clips alone make me want to push for Ray to have his own show — they are wonderfully human and in depth. He brings that same enormous heart that won me over on his poverty pieces through the years to this subject as well.

The magnitude of what these orphaned children face will rip your heart out:

Our first stop was a tiny hamlet in the mountains north of Durban, where we visited the tiny home of three girls left orphaned by AIDS three years ago. Their mother died in 2002, their father in 2006. The graves sit just feet from the front door of their home. Try to imagine being left without parents, with little extended family, and being able to look on your parents’ graves when you walk out your front door every morning.

Take the time to watch and read the whole of his reporting thus far. Ray is an old-school journalist who takes the craft of what he does as seriously as implications and need for asking the questions that ought to make people uncomfortable. And questions about "the lost generation" desperately need to be asked.

This is some of his best work. Considering how wonderful his past reporting on poverty and race has been, that is really saying something.