Mama Caroli
- Part 1 -
Story By Thiyam Ningol, Africa

*

The children had been waiting for this moment. They had been watching TV, the "National Channel" to see their mother, to hear her speech.

When their mother's name was called out, the 2 two girls screamed, they saw their mother approaching the stage amidst the applause of the audience. The youngest girl became crazy, screamed louder and louder "Mummy I love you, we all love you very much, we are seeing you on the TV." The elder sister also cried with tears of joy rolling down on her cheeks.

The two boys controlled their emotion as their mother had trained them.

The audience in the Congress have quitened down, but the two girls were still screaming.

The boys shouted to them in unison to shut up and ordered them to allow them to listen to their mother. They missed the beginning part of her speech.

"…..I am a mother of four children. I am on ARVs for the past five years.

We have lost four family members - my husband, my brother in law, his wife and their last born baby.

All of them started suffering when there was no ARVs available at the affordable prices.

On top of that, there was this concept of stigma.

Today I am going to tell you from my own practical experience about stigmatization and what I have lost from that.

My husband was diagnosed to have HIV infection for quite some time before he decided to tell me. He could not tell me earlier because he thought I would react to him badly, I would neglect him. We would stigmatize him. He delayed to get my attention and care for him.

My brother in law and his wife had the same situation. We never knew about their health situation till when my sister in law became very sick and was in her last days.

After I was checked and found HIV infected, for the first few days I segregated myself from my friend circle. When I saw people whispering something to each other, I suspected they were talking about me. If anybody asked whether I was feeling alright, I answered them rudely. When they offered help of any type, I straight away refused their offer. Seeing my negative attitude, my friends and colleagues started avoiding me. When I was avoiding them, I thought I was doing myself a favour. When they avoided me, I accused them of stigmatizing me even though I came to know later that none of them knew I was HIV infected. To my surprise and relief, since I openly started attending the clinic and taking part in the HIV/AIDS counseling and educational programs, I have more friends and well wishers than I ever had. I am back to my old friend circle.

They make me feel stronger and needed. They value my efforts. They talk about me as a role model and I feel proud. That is when I realized, the stigmatization was within me, from me to myself, making myself miserable.

We talked to our children when they were still young about our condition. With whatever knowledge we had about HIV infection at that time, we explained to them and gave them the message of importance of its avoidance.

Even though they were still very young, they saw and remembered the sufferings and the lost our family have had so far. Today they see me active and living like any other mother, loving them, caring them. My children are my inspirations.

All these have become possible because of the tireless efforts of our government, the doctors, scientists, the donor countries and above all the openness and willingness to participate voluntarily by the people who are affected with HIV.

So, my dear friends and children who are listening to me, come out and join hands with us to fight against this dreadful disease. There are a lot of people out here who care about you, about us

Thank you all."

When her speech was over, all the children embraced together and wept together, each swearing in silence to be strong and supportive to their mother.
They waited eagerly for the phone call from their mother.

Mama Caroli was HIV activist.
She was on the ARV drugs for the past 5 years.
She became a widow 10 years ago. Her husband left her with two beautifull children, the elder, a girl named Carolina and a boy, James. They were 12 and 9yrs old, primary school students when their father died. Mama Caroli ( Sophia) did not hide from her children the nature of the illness their father suffered.

Sophia worked as a secretary in a successful and popular travel agent office. She was popularly known as Sophi or mama Caroli to her close relatives and friends. When her husband started acting strangely, she had enquired from him whether anything was bothering him. He did not reveal anything. As his health condition started deteriorating, one day he had to apologise and made Sophia listen to him with shock and disgust.

They were working in the same company; that is where they met. He worked as the tour guide. Very often he traveled with the tourists to different destinations, mostly to the game parks. Sometimes he would go for over a week. She never suspected him of having a relation with other women. She trusted him.

When the two hotel attendants died with whom they had casual relations while on tour, Sophi's husband and some colleagues decided to check their health status. Most of them were found to be HIV infected and her husband was one of them. Not long after the death of the two hotel attendants, one of their friends had committed suicide just weeks before getting married. Sophi's husband had been attending different clinics but things were not going favourably. Recently he had contacted TB and for that he needed to attend the clinic daily. He had to excuse himself from the duties assigned. He did not like to reveal to his employer. He was given several warnings. Before things went worse he had to tell Sophi about his health and his job.

Sophia was in shock. She could not think properly. She was confused whether to console him or to accuse him; to thank him for being open or blame him for hiding so long. She wanted to scream, cry out. She felt like tearing her body into pieces; pull her hair and pluck out the scalp. But she did none of them, just stared at him blankly. Did not speak a word. But her husband saw and heard all the unspoken anger of Sophi. He noticed the twitching of her lips, her nostrils, heaving her chest and sighing often.

They remained seated in the same place for more than one hour without saying anything to each other. Each had devilish thoughts wandering wildly inside their minds.

When the children demanded supper, then only Sophi realized it was already late evening. The children got dry bread with tea only as supper on that night. The children noticed the tension among their parents; so they accepted the food without grudge.

Sophi did not sleep even for a wink that night.

Her husband suggested that the next day morning when he would go to the clinic, they should go together so that the doctors could check her condition also.

Sophi thought again and again if she would also be found HIV infected, then what would happen to the children.

After her thoughts of "IFS" wandered through all the possible tough lives, imagining her children being among the street children, Sophi decided whatever result come out from the tests, she would fight till her last breath. She had heard superficially from the news media that the government was going to provide free treatment soon. So there was a slim chance of surviving till their children become adults. She agreed to go with him and spent the rest of the dark night waiting to become brighter.

The next day morning, she asked her daughter to take care of her brother, as they might be late to come back.


***** This story attached here is dedicated to Worlds AIDS day, 1st December

To be continued......