The difficulties are compounded by drought, which has left granaries all but bare. The country, middle-income by African standards, now grows less than half its annual required cereal supply and as much as 20 percent of the population requires emergency food aid.
Strategies to handle what amounts to the slow-motion collapse of Swazi society are hard to come by.
UNICEF has launched a program of "neighborhood care points" where vulnerable children -- often AIDS orphans -- can receive rations of a nutritionally-enhanced corn-soy porridge and an hour or two of adult company.
"The older ones are acting as parents for the younger ones, but it is not enough," said Dorothy Nxumalo, who oversees one center in Mlindazwe, which counts some 70 new orphans in a population of 6,000.
More corn-soy porridge would help, as would better medical care -- all of which could be improved with US aid.
But activists are concerned that the US legislation has not put any actual dollars in the AIDS pot, and warn that Congress could finally approve an amount that falls far short of expectations.
Bush has asked for about US$2 billion to fund the programme in the first year, about US$1 billion less than the law authorized.
"President Bush may not notice it but he's walking to a continent of mass death where life expectancy is in its 30s and 40s, said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on development.
"Millions of people are dying and the US apart from spin has basically done nothing for years," Sachs said.
Christina Bulunga smiles shyly when asked what she thinks should be done.
The children she cares for need education, she says, and above all food -- a tough proposition in a country where fields are parched and farmers are dying.
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