And so I can remember the first time I encountered HIV. Sure I had heard stories about it, heck my dad even worked with people infected/ affected with and by HIV, had heard cruel whispers about that shrinking neighbor they said had HIV, but never encountered it in my house. Now you would think being AIDS it had just budged menacingly into my world dressed aptly in black robes reeking of death. No. She was a beautiful, bright 17 year old girl with big white eyes and a fair complexion.
Dad worked with the Aids Information Center in Mbarara. When my sister and cousin were due to join S.1, he took them for a random HIV test. Or maybe it was not random at all. A few years before that, my cousin from Kabale had been brought over to live with us. Rumor has it her mother had found her in a compromising situation with a man in their latrine and dispatched her to live with my disciplinarian father. She was 14, in P.6. And so in 1992 she'd come to live with us and quickly struck up a friendship with our older sister 12 at the time, who was also in P.6. Shortly before they left home for secondary school, father took them to his office where they were carrying out free HIV tests that day. I never found out till years later but when they were due to fetch their HIV results, father was called in by the counselor and advised that one of his daughters had tested HIV +ve and because she was a minor, dad had to be told first to decide whether or not to reveal this news to her.
In 1993, HIV was not something you discussed openly. It was not something you could live under the same roof with openly. You stayed away from people with HIV lest they infected you just breathing the same air. In fact, you rebuked it in the strongest sense and made the person who carried it feel as worthless as possible. After all, short of prostitution and promiscuity where else could they have gotten it? You never looked them in the face, you stopped shaking their hand hello, they had their own plates, cups, forks anything. Not that it was ever said directly, but everybody stopped using something once a known HIV carrier had touched it and so consequently they ended up in isolation even when the world around them bustled with activity. And so dad never really told any of the girls what their results had revealed and so we all lived in ignorant bliss. Well, everyone but my dad who had to break the news to the girl’s mother. I never knew how that went. After that, it became routine for the rest of us to undergo HIV tests just before we joined Secondary School.
And so my cousin went on to join Secondary School in a school not that far off from our home town. It was in a town that my father frequented on his regular trips to offer HIV testing and counseling services in villages and upcountry towns. Thinking about it later, I realise that was a deliberate move to enroll her in a nearby school where he could keep an eye on her, visiting up to 6 times a term while my sister studied hundreds of miles away in Kabale even though with her asthma condition common sense dictated she be the one brought closer to home. Well, uninformed common sense really.
My cousin was in S.3 when she eventually fell too ill to continue with boarding school or any schooling for that matter and so she was brought back home from school one term and she never went back. I remember thinking just how slim Immy had grown and how pale her once glowing brown skin had become. Also, how come she ate the better food than the rest of us? It was not long before the neighbors started talking and soon before their children carried the rumors down to us. Apparently Immy was HIV positive. I was 9, in Primary Five. I remember thinking that that was the end for me. I started to think of the different times I had touched her. How many times I had found a razor blade lying around the house and used it, how many times I had eaten some of her eggs when she could not stomach them. I cried hysterically that day, knowing I had contracted the HIV virus through no fault of my own. Why couldn’t I have been more careful?
Sadly, HIV drugs cost an arm and a leg at the time (they still do cost perhaps an arm) and my father lived on a meager income with six mouths to feed, clothe, and school, not to mention a girlfriend or two that probably needed flowers on valentine’s day and so could not afford the cost of medication for my cousin and so a few months after I had discovered she was HIV, Immaculate passed. I remember feeling the same terror I had felt the first day I had found out she was HIV. What if she had passed it on to me somehow? How long did I have to live? But soon, she would be just a memory and my fears would wane just as fast as they had appeared. After all, I was 9, many games to play, school gossip to spread around, boy crushes to cure, homework and school work to worry about.
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