I start my day by cursing my husband. For giving me AIDS, and then taking himself off the face of the Earth forever. Then, I remember that I run an advocacy group where I, before everyone else, must be happy to “live positive”, the euphemism we have for living with HIV.
Ours was an unlikely love story, and I relate it in nearly every meeting. He was a farmer in our ancestral village and I was a Maths graduate in a nearby city where my parents also worked as lecturers. We fell in love during vacation visits. We married, and set ourselves up in a world that contained just the two of us, and a little later, our little daughter. The eggshell of our relationship, however, was already cracking.
My husband tested positive for AIDS. I was around 19, and expecting my second child (who I miscarried shortly after) when the it took possession of our lives. It was not his implied philandering that shook me but the total lack of an escape clause. Divorce would not have solved anything because I’d still be an AIDS-sufferer minus a spouse, including a dependent girl.
He suggested a suicide pact instead. Poison the daughter first even though she didn’t have AIDS, and then the both of us take it. But our hearts rebelled. Why kill a child who had no role in this sordid game of lottery?
My husband died 14 years ago, done in by the shortage of anti-retroviral treatment (ART) drugs and the money to go to private hospitals. I told everyone who attended the funeral that he had contracted lung cancer, but the rumour-mongering had already started.
I left the village before it worsened, and started looking for a job in the city where I had studied. My excellent academic results were no match for the scorn heaped on my status. I joined as an outreach worker for a social work organisation, counselling sex workers about AIDS.
As I developed a small network of friends and acquaintances, I realised that we still needed to accept the reality of AIDS. We are not all sex workers, homosexuals or people with multiple sexual partners.
These days, I spend my days poring over the booklets that the Government AIDS centres have issued to us. In the great battle raging inside our bodies, it’s important to know how far the adversary has advanced and how far our soldiers can hold it back. It’s a little tough, talking about tomorrow when there may be no other day left on the calendar.
In the early days, we used to be a bunch of HIV-positive widows gathering every week. Now, you can see couples coming in, proof that the second and third generation of people with AIDS are here. For women like me, our days will always begin with a silent curse sent up to the man who played fast and loose, and left us behind to clean up his mess.
