Thu, 13 Apr 2017 09:22:43 +0000
By JUSTINA MULENGA
| THE truth was kept away from childhood until I grew up and discovered that I was born with HIV, says 19-year-old Doreen Munyanga of Misisi compound in Lusaka. |
“Living with HIV has not been an easy life for me from the time I discovered I had it because I did not accept looking at the kind of life I lived,” she said.
Doreen was born with HIV from her mother who died few days after her birth.
Her grandmother a teacher by then took care of her as no one was ready to live with an HIV positive child around them.
She said that her childhood life was so challenging because most of her mother’s relatives and their children gave her a distance which made her feel out of place.
She narrates that her grandmother was the only one who had accepted her fully and cared for her.
“My grandmother has been supporting me from childhood and has always been there for me,” she said. Doreen’s grandmother would administer ARVs to her as her medication telling her that she had a problem since childhood and that that medicine was the help to make her live a better life.
Doreen had no knowledge of what her grandmother told her and took as care that her grandmother was giving her.
She could feel weak at times but she discovered that the medication she was on helped her a lot.
“I had no idea about HIV and its drugs because I had little information and only thought the virus was only for those who were sleeping around as it is known as sexually transmitted disease,” she said.
Doreen said that whenever she rose any topic and ask questions about HIV/AIDS, her grandmother would shy away from the topic and expressed a face of sadness.
She had no idea what made her grandmother feel sad any time she mentioned about the HIV topic.
“I began learning about what HIV is when I took keen interest in joining the Anti-AIDS club at my school in grade 7,” she said.
Doreen learnt a lot through the anti-AIDS club at her school and could encourage those she knew were living with the virus.
“I was talking to my friends who told me about their HIV statuses and would encourage them to loves themselves because there was a purpose for their lives without knowing I had it too,” she said.
She said of them she had talked to, said they were born with it and this made her want to take a step and go for an HIV test. Doreen said she did not tell her grandmother of her decision fearing that she might be stopped to go ahead.
“I kept my decision to have an HIV test from my grandmother because she didn’t like to talk about the disease, and decided to go on without her knowledge,” she said.
It was a hard decision to make but Doreen decided to go ahead.
She said she had gone through counselling before taking up the test which gave her more confidence to go ahead.
“The results were that I was HIV positive and refused to accept it,” she said.
Doreen said she went home and told her grandmother about her status who burst out into tears.
“I wondered why my grandmother was crying, I started crying too because I couldn’t bear seeing her in tears,” she said.
My grandmother later opened up and told me everything and what led to my mother’s demise, she narrates.
Doreen said that her grandmother was her hero because she fought that battle for her all by herself.
“I went through stigma by the relatives who knew my status from the start, not knowing that HIV was what they were stigmatizing me for,” she said.
Through counselling, Doreen had been helped to accept and live with her status despite stigma among members of the community.
“I am not ashamed to be HIV positive because God has seen me through it from birth and have seen people without it die and I believe death is not cause by a disease but God’s timing,” she narrates.
Doreen encouraged those living with HIV not to lose hope because there was more to life than having self-pity.
