Know Your Status

The other day I did something very South African: I went for an HIV/AIDS test.

The place to go in Grahamstown is the Raphael Centre, a non-governmental organization for people living with HIV/AIDS. I decided to go check it out, and why not? Get tested.

The Raphael Centre is located on a quiet residential street. I entered and told the woman at reception, “I’d like to get tested.” I was immediately guided to the counsellor’s room, where the counsellor asked a few questions like: “Are you sexually active? How many partners have you had in the past month? Four months? Did you use a condom the last time you had sex?” I then went to see the nurse, who administered the test. She took a drop of my blood and put it into a notch on a small plastic slide, then added a drop of test solution. While waiting for the results, we chatted. She educated me on the “window period”, the three-month period immediately after contracting HIV/AIDS where it might not show up on a test because your body has not yet produced the antibodies. I could see my blood seeping across an open slot on the plastic slide, reach the other side, then come back. A small line appeared.

The strange thing was how nervous I felt while waiting for the results, even though I knew my chances of testing positive were virtually nil. I suppose this is the reason so many people who actually are at risk don’t get tested. HIV/AIDS is very much a part of the consciousness in South Africa. The statistics are frightening – about 20% of the population is infected, and rumour is that 1 of 6 students at Rhodes are positive. Advertisements encouraging people to practise safe sex and get tested are everywhere. And so is the fear.

I recently read this passage from Stephen Lewis’s book Race Against Time (pp. 53-54):

On the floor of the hut lies a young woman – always young – in her twenties or thirties, so wan and emaciated as to be unable to lift either hand or head. I bend down, painfully inadequate to the circumstance, and touch her brow, uttering some pointless banality which is intended to soothe, and then as I step back, looking around me, I see her children, all her children, standing in the darkened shadows, watching their mother die.

How do they ever recover? The death is long, agonizing, and filled with indignity. The children wash their mother, they clean her up when she’s incontinent (an experience of excruciating embarrassment for both mother and children), they search everywhere for an aspirin to relieve the pain of some opportunistic infection, and then, horrified, gaping, they stand in the darkened shadows, and watch their mother die.

Many of us know the pain of losing a loved one. Five months ago, I lost my mother to cancer. They were painful times but we were also surrounded by love and comfort. She passed away in a hospice, where nurses provided 24-hour care and gave us hugs and cookies. I realize how lucky we were and I cannot grasp how great the pain of these orphans.

I tested negative.

On my way out, I made a small donation and spoke to someone about volunteering for the Centre. I learned that the Raphael Centre – despite providing one of the most important services in South Africa – is not government-funded, and that everyone who works at the Centre is HIV positive. I will hopefully be assisting the Centre with throwing a children’s party in December.