LIFE CAN COME FROM DEATH: MY PERSONAL FIGHT WITH HIV/AIDS

The year was 2005. I was 15 years old and a student in a boarding school. I would write letters to my mother requesting more money and provisions. I would also request that she come visit me, but she never turned up. She had also been promoted to Acting Director of Collection and planning at the internal revenue board in my state. She was doing well in her career. I wondered why my mother would not visit me despite many letters. I was soon to find out.

The holiday came, and on getting home, my beloved mother was absent. I was told she was sick and receiving treatment from a traditional healer in a village. We got into the car and went to see her. A relative pointed to me, the hut she was kept in. It was dark and small. There my mother laid on a mat in the room surrounded by herbs and pots containing locally mixed herbs. The traditional healer was preparing more herbs to give her for the evening. I could not recognise my mum. She had drained and deteriorated. I began to cry. She consoled me and assured me she would be fine soon. I would soon learn she would never be fine. The story was that she was sick because someone had made her sick using witchcraft. The traditional healer was the only solution.

A few weeks later, the traditional healer certified her free from the witchcraft-inflicted sickness. She returned home, but her health got worse, and she was taken to the hospital from where she was never to return. She died on 7th Jan 2006. Her death was painful. It was HIV/AIDS, but the earlier diagnosis was witchcraft. If only she was taken to the hospital earlier. Maybe I would still have a mother.

Her death became part of my inspiration in life. It broke me. However, it was part of the reason I kept fighting with AIDS through my studies, research and profession. HIV/AIDS killed someone I loved so dearly, but I was determined to have the last laugh. In the past decade, all research and work I have done was around HIV/AIDS. My M.Sc thesis was about the traditional beliefs around HIV/AIDS. I even dedicated a whole chapter of my PhD thesis to discussing similar beliefs that made me an orphan. Oh!! Yes. I lost my dad, too, at age 20.

You see, life can come from death. I watched people I love suffer and die on account of a deadly disease, but I chose to fight. I fought hard. My fight with AIDS was personal. I won multiple scholarships and awards in the course of that fight. I was determined to win. I had lost so much. So much died in my life as a 15 and 20-year-old. However, now I have life because I came out victorious in my fight with HIV/AIDS.

What has stolen your joy?
What has broken you?
It is okay to cry. It is okay to feel down.
But please fight.
Let the fight be personal because life can come from death.

Pictures:
1. Baby AAP with Magdalene, his late mum.
2, 3 & 4: The prologue from my PhD thesis. It captures the story in detail.

If you want to read my PhD thesis, Here is the link https://eprints.qut.edu.au/246681/

#DrAAPTalks #ScholarshipSweetDie