In life there are many stigmas held against people. One of the largest stigmatised groups of people are those suffering with HIV and AIDS. Across all cultures in all corners of the earth, people can find themselves ostracised for having a virus that is out of anyone’s control. On the outside they’re exactly the same as anyone else. You can’t even tell if someone’s HIV+, but as soon as it becomes known that someone is positive the HIV negative person becomes just that: Negative. They start to draw away, often with one thought on their mind “I hope I didn’t catch AIDS”.
I’m aware I’m generalising as most people realise that you cannot ‘catch’ HIV just from chatting to someone. And a positive person wants to give it to you just as much as you want to contract the virus. Having lived with the virus; they wouldn’t wish it upon their worst enemy.
I’m not going to lie. The moment I heard I was going to an AIDS Group Therapy Session my first reaction was “I hope I don’t get HIV”. In all honesty it wasn’t the virus affecting my body I was worried about. In some parts of the world, with medical advances, it’s now possible to live a long and fulfilling life with the virus with a reduced risk of it ever progressing to AIDS. What I was worried about was the abuse and discrimination that befalls people who have the HIV virus. Although in many countries there are laws against workplace discrimination, if you have HIV there are still occupations that are off limits.
In Malawi if you are known to be HIV+ it is harder to find regular employment which means that they can’t keep the level of nutrition they need to stay healthy enough for medication to be really effective.
It’s strange, before coming out here I hardly ever thought about my own safety in terms of being infected. It’s never occurred to me that I might be sitting next to or talking to someone that has the virus, because for all intent and purposes, it really doesn’t matter. Whilst I’ve been out here I have had several conversations with a particular community member, then he arrived at an AIDS Support Group session and it made me think; would I have had those conversations if I had known he was positive? And even after all I know about the transmission of HIV, I think that maybe, in the back of my mind, I would have been too preoccupied to listen to the wisdom he was imparting on me.
Here in Malawi approximately 11% of the population has HIV and people are always telling you to take precautions and to be honest, I have hardly thought about it. When I was in hospitals and was given injections, I didn’t once consider if the needle was sterile. Emily told me afterwards that it was. But not once during the experience did I think about it. I guess that’s how it happens to some people. When you’re in pain and in a subpar clinic you are not thinking about how sterile the equipment is. You just want the pain to go away. And with the relief from one pain you are given a whole new set of problems.
When attending Dunduzu AIDS Support Group not once did they complain about being HIV positive, not once. They were happy being together and knowing that they were positive and receiving the correct treatment. As most sessions out here finish, we finished with a song. It was in Chitambuka so I understood nothing of what they were singing, but it was beautiful. Afterwards we asked for a translation and one of the in-country volunteers said the song was about telling people who haven’t been tested how foolish they were.
Hopefully with our Worlds AIDS Day event on the 21 February (the theme of which is “Getting to Zero”; zero HIV and AIDS related deaths, zero HIV and AIDS related diseases, zero discrimination and zero stigmatisation), along with the work we are putting in trying to stop the discrimination against those who are HIV+, whether it be through sessions at schools or AIDS TOTO clubs etc, discrimination may be reduced for those we are working with; resulting in less reluctance to be tested. Eventually more people will start receiving the medication they need to live a long and fulfilling life.
Written by ICS volunteer Savannah Morrison
