It is with us all...lets face it positively

By Chiku Jere

This story tells how HIV and Aids got closer to my life, both as a journalist and an individual.
“I got infected because of the loving and caring I gave to other infected people,” my late mother confided in me, at a private mother-to-son talk. She got infected at the age of 70. ‘That old?’ one would ask- ‘Yes, it sees no age’ would be my answer.
Indeed I saw my mother bravely and positively battle with the disease for two years until she lost the fight last year on 1st December.

Her sickbed was a counselling room for all of us, her remaining children and other relatives, who came to visit her. She did not stop advising us on the trends of life, and the way we can pull them towards positive course.

While talking, in her eyes, you could see the strength of a hopeful woman, who was facing the reality of her ailing health with courage. She was still the joyful and God fearing woman I had known. She did not want anyone to show a gloomy face because of her ill-health.
“God, I’ve tried my part and I know you will reward me,” she could say with a smile, wanting those who were present to say ‘Amen’ in acknowledgement.

And this could bring a smile of contentment on her face. She would not mention of death but a pass-on; a pass-on to the land where good things were expecting her after a job-well-done on earth.

“I’ve done my job and yours is remaining,” she could tell me, as someone on whom she would pass the responsibility of looking after those who depended on her. Indeed, the whole job is left to me after her passing.

However, with her courage instilling words of wisdom, I look only for positive aspects of how I can positively face, and stand strong against the negative realities of this world.
Let me share with you how it all began.

HIV and Aids invaded our household as early as the 1990s.

My auntie, the only sister to my father, was suffering from incessant illnesses and needed someone to be close to take care of her. That someone turned out to be my ‘Mama’. It was traditionally an automatic responsibility for my mother to look-after her sick sister in-law.

Innocently, trying to play a good caring in-law she took the role whole heartedly. She knew what my auntie was suffering from for she was the one who had insisted of her having an HIV test amid denial from other relatives- which turned up positive. My auntie died under the care of my mom a year later.

However, her death was not to give anything for a breather to my mother. The disease was at her door step once again. This time it was my cousin; a son to my mother’s brother- my late uncle who died way back.

Once again, my mother took the responsibility of taking care of him after his mother (a wife to my late uncle) refused to take care of her own son. He lived for three years grappling, with the pangs of the disease until he exhausted all efforts and died of HIV and Aids related illnesses. He died very young at the age of 26. ‘Mama’ was the one taking care of this young man until his demise.

She thought it was done but she was wrong. Little did she know that the disease was moving closer and closer to her own home.

Mercilessly it jumped on her first born son. This was the last straw that was to mark the end of her tireless effort of being there for loved ones.

She now, was to be next in line. Mama, single handedly, struggled a lot to raise a family of five children, four sons and one daughter—effectively playing both roles as a mother and father.

For over ten years (1979 to 1989) that my father dad spent in jail as a political prisoner, she looked after us with the meagre monthly salary she was getting as a primary school teacher.

She managed to educate us until our father was released at the dawn of democracy.

Then the father died few years later heaping her once again with the job of looking after the children and some relatives.

As an old adage says “the love of a mother is greater than anything”. I came to believe this when my elder brother, the first born in the family, got sick.

There was some bad blood between my mother and my brother’s wife and my brother publicly disowned my mother.

But after sometime, my brother was sick and his wife abandoned him leaving him with a little boy-child which my mother took care of.

“He is still my son and I want to see my grandson,” she said.

She managed to trace my brother and brought him and the child back home. He was seriously ill with no one else to take him for medical treatment.

Mama’s fear was vindicated when my brother tested HIV positive. She strived to find food and treatment to, at least, pro-long the life of her beloved son. She could bath him, feed him, and stay all the way with him hoping and praying that his life would be spared.

All the way, my mother did not complain, but with that motherly love, did the job she strongly believed God gave her; thus to take care of the loved ones with real love.

The battle to sustain my brother’s life was sadly lost two years later.

Eventually Mama started getting unwell. She secretly went for HIV testing and when it was confirmed she was positive, she broke the news to the family. “This time, it is me,” this was what she said to me behind the closed door of her bedroom.

Mama believed she got infected while taking care of all the loved ones. “I do not regret doing that entire job. It was meant for me and who else?” she said.

God bless all those who place their lives at risk trying to take care of the sick.

But can’t the world find a way of protecting those who care for their loved ones infected with HIV and Aids?