As a child Nathan Atcheson never knew if he had contracted the AIDS virus which killed his father ? blind faith told him he would be all right and so it proved.

And it is that same blind faith which is taking Nathan, 23, to Africa to help children who, like himself, have also lost parents to the disease now sweeping that continent.

The mission could eventually put Nathan in danger as he later plans to visit northern Uganda where the Lord?s Resistance Army ? killers of Bermudian missionary Colin Lee ? lurk.

But Nathan is undeterred. For him tackling the effects of AIDS is a personal mission that began with the death of his father, Carl, when he was just two.

?I don?t really remember my father. It was more of an issue on Father?s Day in P1 and P2. I simply knew I didn?t have a father but I wasn?t sure what that meant.?

Luckily another man named Carl came into his life when he was six, under the Big Brothers/Big Sisters banner, and has acted as a guiding light ever since.

Today on International Big Brother/Thank your mentor day, Nathan paid tribute to Carl Shechtman who helped take his father?s place. Nathan said: ?Within my family there was a bit of separation caused by what my father had died of, so Carl was more family to me than a lot of my family. I don?t want them to read that and cause further problems but it is the truth.

?Although it was different to not have a father and what he had died of was a unique situation, none of that really mattered because with Carl it wasn?t an issue.?

changing in many ways for the Atchesons, who are from St. George?s.

?My father was one of the first cases in Bermuda. I didn?t comprehend it when I was younger. I just knew it was a blood issue.?

Nathan?s mother Chris opened the STAR charity (Supportive Therapy for People with AIDS and their Relatives) in 1985.

She first went to Africa for an AIDS conference and got to know the continent and its desperate need for help.

That led her to start the Restorers of Hope charity to open orphanages for children of AIDS victims and also orphans from the war in the north.

Mother and son went to Africa in 2004 and and have already helped to finance an orphanage in Kenya.

The first time Nathan went for three weeks and was struck by the appreciative reception he had.

It wasn?t so much of a culture shock as he found Africa is cooler than Bermuda with less humidity. Many people spoke English and the architecture reminded him of a western city when he first arrived in Kampala.

But appearances can be deceiving.

?The people looked well dressed but when you looked closer their clothes were dirty, ripped and torn and the buildings weren?t painted, there were cracks and windows missing.

?It was a kind of parallel place, it looked like a western city but extreme poverty was everywhere. Everywhere was very dry.?

He is also spent time in Kabale, on the Uganda/Rwanda border where he saw mothers and children chipping at granite to gather material they hoped they could sell to road pavers.

?They were chipping all day with no guarantee they would sell it. Life seemed a lot more real out there than here. Things we are concerned with here lose their importance.?

The locals, despite being so poor, wanted to feed the Atchesons who had to politely avoid anything cooked in water for fear of disease.

?It was a cultural thing to get you to eat as much as possible to show you were accepted.?

On February 4 the pair will again journey again to Africa to look at properties for another orphanage. In Uganda they are working with a reverend and his wife who will run it.

They have also hooked up with a young man, himself a former street orphan, who now houses nearly 50 kids in his apartment.

Nathan said: ?We will meet up with him to see how we can help each other. We want to establish a farm around the property so it can be self-sustaining.

?We also want to go up to the north of Uganda where the Lord?s Resistance Army have been slaughtering people for decades to get training in trauma counselling to help as we can to heal the wounds. It?s a massive problem.?

He said he wanted to protect his mother and is undeterred by the dangers.

?They don?t like foreigners trying to change the situation they have created. They also have a religious animosity to US Christians as Muslims,? said Nathan, who, although Christian, does not have a church allegiance.

He has no second thoughts about putting himself in harm?s way. ?It?s not at all an issue. The benefits are far greater.?

But for the moment the focus is on the AIDS problem in a continent were a child dies every 20 seconds, according to his mother.

?She expects to spend a lot of time over there. Neither of us will be happy about hearing about it from e-mails of over the phone.

?She feels like Africa is a place she is called to. She hasn?t had to make it happen, it has simply fallen into place. I very much want to go with her with my father having died of AIDS.

?There was a strong chance I could have had AIDS myself, my mother could have had it, but we never really sought doctor?s opinions on it. We trusted that we didn?t have it and so it proved.

?AIDS is considered an African disease so coming from the West, especially Bermuda, and losing someone as close as my father, I feel I can relate to them and them to me.

?When you lose your father it becomes personal mission. It is not something you can shirk aside as someone else?s problem.

?I hope I can spend the rest of my life doing it,? said Nathan who who is still finishing his English degree. ?I feel like I am meant to do it.

?I don?t want to live my life with regret. If I am doing something like this there is no chance of living with regret.?