THE 1990s SILIMU. KAVEERA. MUKENENYA. END INEQUALITIES.END AIDS.END PANDEMICS

 

By: Nankwanga Eunice Kasirye

During my Primary School time in 1990s, HIV/AIDS was the most dreaded monster of our time, it was a ghost no one knew where it came from and where it was going…families were isolated, individuals were blacklisted… life was but a package of myths, superstitions and uncertainties

The communities had a ghost of death hovering over it, the graveyards were all full of fresh graves, there was that silence of death…the village seemed to tiptoe, lest the spirit of death could be destructed and strike in protest….

It would start with a rumour in the village, after someone developing a serious fever, someone getting a pregnancy miscarriage, some couple experiencing a still birth, someone losing or gaining weight, abrupt death and I remember, even there was a time, giving birth to twins was another reason to ignite the rumour …and there, the village tests and diagnose you to be infected with HIV/AIDS.

The stigmatizing indirect and direct insinuations, loud and silent gossip whispers begin, pointing winks against you begin…. the world start to narrow around the victim, the social circles narrow from out, closer to friends starting to avoid you, until the isolation gets into the family … the myths around HIV AIDS were too chilling that even your own blood relatives abandon you for own survival.

The Moment a person became a center of the village diagnostic team, hmmm, the real pain begins characterized with depression, uncertainty, loss of appetite, loneliness and isolation, automatically this would translate into low immunity and loss of weight.

The loss of weight, the hopelessness, the anxiety that would loom around the person and the close family members was enough to send anyone close to the coffin and grave pit ….

HIV/AIDS patient
(photo credit: WHO)

Someone would start to lose weight slowly but consistently, lose the hair, lips turn out red, eyes protrude out white, shoulders lose the fresh to turn into hanger-like …oooh gosh! A ghost-like figure-is what one would remain

Children would run away if they met anyone in such a state, grownups would walk at the other side of the road to avoid close contact….

Families would label the utensils used by the SICK PERSON, a special make shift house would sometimes be constructed at the edge of the family compound to house the sick or additional room on the main house would be put up… some special exceptional family members, one or two would volunteer to be the caretakers…. of the sick

Happiness and joy would automatically disappear from that particular family…. the invisible bells of death would silently and loudly be heard in that particular compound…. Laughter was unheard of, the family members would give up on the sick, they could seem like on a springboard waiting for a jerk to spring them into wails and mourning at the death of the sick…. silently and sometimes loudly the family members would wait for the moment when the sick dies and they regain their PEACE AND SANITY.

That was SILIMU(slim), KAVEERA (polythene I haven’t known why it was called so), MUKENENYA(drainer)

Stigma was the real threat and killer here. I doubt whether most of these sick people were tested and diagnosed by professional medical doctors before giving up to HIV/AIDS

The other chilling moment was when one returned from the city/urban centre sick of anything, there was that un written conclusion that staying in the city/urban place was an obvious ticket to being infected by HIV/AIDS

Trust humanity and beliefs, society had to find a way to go around the stigma, I grew up in a typical Africa, setting… where we had spirits owning water-wells, trees, shrubs and persons representing some sort of spirit….

During that time, my community still practiced spousal inheritance, if a young man lost a wife, the wife’s family would take it upon themselves to find the widower an immediate replacement. And if a wife lost a husband, the husband’s family would immediately find an immediate brother to take on the widow. In some cases, where no one would take on the widow, the widow often kept the husband’s compound to take care of the young children despite of her personal desire to remarry.

Young widows and widowers were a common sight in the 90s, it was rare for anyone to die of anything else but HIV AIDS. The old, somehow stopped dying and even when one died in an accident, somehow a rumour would spill around that the accident just rushed the victims’ death but somehow he/she was meant to die of HIV/AIDS.

In a community where spirits still had power, witchcraft was a problem maker and solver… the families would start up a rumour as well, about their family member, the sick one, that someone bewitched him/her with a spell instigated from the grave of a person who died of AIDS.

This meant that the (Claimed) bewitched person would be infested with a strange disease that presents the same symptoms as those of a person infected with HIV/AIDS

The witchcraft rumour would be well circulated to cover up the HIV/AIDS rumour… witchdoctors would be brought in to treat the sick or sometimes the sick would be ferried to the Witchdoctors shrines…. spirits would be invoked to speak; some name would be mentioned …the names would often be said to be the person who bewitched the sick

In this confusion, somehow the sick would regain some hope, after all if it wasn’t HIV/AIDS, the chance to survive was high…. the sick would slowly regain appetite, improve immunity and get back with some weight regain…

Here some young widows would pass and get into relationship with other young men after all the husbands were assumed to have died of witchcraft. 

I think that is what resulted into a situation where a lot of children were infected during birth.

Thank God in the 1990s still, that was the time when scientists were busy in laboratories to find a solution and there were visible aggressive campaigns against HIV/AIDS and the political will to fight the virus, …...After a decade of increasing prevalence, the spread of the epidemic began to wane in the early 1990s. Since 1993, there is evidence of a consistent decline in HIV prevalence in pregnant women and in other populations under surveillance. There is some indication, however, that HIV incidence peaked in the 1980s and that declines in HIV prevalence in the nineties reflect declines in HIV incidence that occurred during the late 1980s (Low-Beer, 2002).

 End.