[Fwd: DEBATE: (Fwd) Poignant AIDS article (fwd)]

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: DEBATE: (Fwd) Poignant AIDS article (fwd)
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 10:22:06 +0200 (SAST)
From: Peter van Heusden <pvh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>From the South African list 'Debate'
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:14:13 +0000
From: Patrick Bond <pbond@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: debate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: DEBATE: (Fwd) Poignant AIDS article

The author of this excellent story told me she's having a hard time
getting it published; please if you have connections to periodicals
and want to run with it, just let me know...

_________________________________

I don't want to be a safe passage for babies.

By Christine

Since January we had been waiting for the phone call. If the phone
rung at night we jumped in fright, hearts beating. If it rang too
early in the morning my knees would tremble. I dreaded hearing that
click sound an international call makes. I got angry if it was
somebody local phoning so early. Did they not know? Why are they not
sensitive to the fact that I was waiting for that phone call which I
knew would come? Announcing my brother's death.  He finally died on
the 21st March. Bad day to die. I had no money to fly out of Joburg
just like that. It was a holiday, so getting my office's travel agent
was out of the question. Had to get my friend to send the tickets from
home. Cost an arm and a leg those.

This was my third sibling to die in seven years. It was AIDS, the same
disease that had taken the other two in 1993 and 1995. I was born in a
family of five. Whenever people ask me how any one of them died I say
very loudly, "AIDS". I get these puzzled looks, should they touch me
in sympathy? Should they run away? Many just manage to say, "oh", and
a glazed look comes on their faces. Others manage to exclaim,
"really?" I am never sure whether they don't believe me or what the
exclamations mean.

I am a 35 year old woman. I am a feminist, I am black and middle
class. Some would even say I come from a privileged background.
Compared to the majority of women who have to deal with the impact of
this virus, I consider myself and my family lucky. At least all my
siblings died and were buried in dignity. We could afford to put them
in hospitals. We would pay for home-based care, and their children
have a roof over their heads. We now have a total of six orphans. None
of my siblings was married, so all the children are with my parents.
At my brother's funeral people asked, "how many children did he
have?". Only one, we would say. "Thank God. Ah this is better. Thank
your God my dears". And they would smile and reach out to touch.
Others would ask, "how long was he ill for?". Only three months really
we would say. He had been working till December. It was only in
January that the disease debilitated him. "Three months only? Ah that
is good. Praise God". My mother was upset. Why were we praising God at
a time like this? Why were people so insensitive?

But they were not being insensitive. Everybody around us has seen
worse. Mr T next door has been bed-ridden for four years. Alice from
our village has been ill for three years. Mbuya, (grand-mother), Moyo
has 12 orphans to care for, and she has only a two-roomed house. All
her children are gone. Cousin Melody has six children and her parents
died leaving four younger siblings. That is the reality of AIDS where
I come from. If a week passes by without a funeral it is a good week.
These days I don't ask how so and so who I have not seen for three
years is. She might have died. I wait to see her. If I don't, I just
think she is gone. So the mourners were not being unkind, there were
empathising. They were looking on the "bright side". They know what it
can be like for women in our position.

Safe passage for babies

As a black woman I was born to believe that you grow up, you get
married and you have children. Sounded as natural as counting from one
to ten. By the time I was 18 half of my high school friends were
hooked up with one man or another. Heterosexuality was meant to be "in
your blood". By the time I got to 25 most of them were married and had
kids. By the time I got to 30, I had lost count of the ones that had
died. And now there are babies and children everywhere. Feminism or
not, I made a decision after my six year old son that I would not have
another one. Practically I already have seven children. My son is not
short of play-mates. But it is not easy. Everybody asks, "Your son is
old enough now. He needs his own brother or sister. When will you have
one?" What is his own brother or sister - I want to ask. But I just
smile and walk away. Sometimes I try to argue. But we don't go far.
The bottom line seems to be, you are female and heterosexual. Surely
you must want more babies? But, I know my reality and I am trying to
manage it.

As a black woman feminist, I do not want to be a safe passage for
babies. All my working life I have been struggling to ensure that the
medical establishment stops treating me like a mere passage for
babies. I have struggled together with other feminists, at the last
big United Nations World Conferences in Vienna, in Cairo and in
Beijing, to make sure that the world does not just regard me as a
mother. We have told the world that where they have been busy talking
about so called Mother and Child health, (MCH), the M has been
missing. Other women have also told the world that they don't even
want to be mothers! We have reminded our African leaders that not
every black woman is a natural born mother, or a female just waiting
to become a mother.

So in all this talk about retrovirals, where are my rights as a woman?
When are we going to see focus on me as a person first and fore-most
before you think about what comes out of me_ if it ever comes out? I
want the AIDS community, (for lack of a better phrase), to talk about
me, me me.

Consider me selfish, but I think a bit of selfishness is required.

Help me prevent infection

I also want some focus to be on how I as a woman get infected in the
first place. For me, the man I am most afraid of is not the one out on
the street whose name I don't know. The man who is most likely to
infect me is the one I married, the one I live with, or the father of
my child. Yes I am vulnerable to rape by some stranger. Touch wood, so
far that man has not endangered my life. So when the AIDS activists
talk about making these drugs available at clinics and hospitals for
women who have been raped, I hope that includes women like me. Women
who are raped in the name of marriage. I want that to mean women like
me who because lobola was paid for us, we are expected to open our
legs whenever he wants. Even when we can see the sores on his penis,
or we know that he has slept with the domestic worker, or that he had
an STI last month. Culture tells us that we are supposed to do what he
says because he paid. This is the culture that I am forever reminded
by the media, by my family, by my religious leader, by other women
around me that I must wear proudly on my shoulders like an eppaullete.
I am reminded that if I question it, go against it and dare speak
about it, I am a bad woman, I am too Westernised, and I am a bad
influence on other women.

 I would like a discussion on how heterosexuality puts me and other
 black women at risk. I would like my black brothers and sisters to
 talk about and debunk all the myths we have about heterosexuality:
 that it is so natural and anything else is not. I would like as a
 young woman to hear us moving forward in our discussions around
 sexuality and not move backwards. Telling me that in 1800 women
 behaved thus and thus, that virginity was to be monitored and
 protected, and that in the so called good old days nobody had sex
 before marriage will not help me in the year 2000. We can not go back
 to 1800, nobody else wants to go back and even if we were to go back
 there are no more social and political systems that would support
 that going back.

Marriage is not an attractive carrot

Telling us in AIDS awareness workshops that the best way to prevent
infection is to wait for matrimony is dishonesty. I have seen how
women wait for marriage, before having sex, only to get infected by
that very first man they married! Marriage as generally constructed
makes me as a black woman, a sitting duck for infection. So I would
like a lot more effort to be put in educating me on how I can protect
myself. How do I say no? How do I educate other young women? I would
like more focus to be on those around me to support me in the choices
that I make, the choice to live and not get infected, the choice not
to get married or have babies if I so chose.

I don't want my mother to suffer anymore

When I call my mother to ask how the children are, she has one
standard answer, "they are alive". She does not mean to be unkind. She
just has no energy for anything else. I often catch her looking far
into the horizon. At 67 she is tired and stressed with six orphans. I
don't want her to suffer anymore. The mere thought of her drooping
shoulders, her tired face, is enough to scare me away from an
unprotected penis. What will happen to these kids if I die? Who will
take care of them? The state? Charitable organisations?  I know the
state can throw some money at you, and well-wishers can send blankets,
and the religious can offer a prayer. But they will not be there to go
to my son's sports day. They will not be there to take him to the
clinic should his leg break.. if of course there is a clinic and there
is medicine. But that is another story.

 Women based care

We really should stop calling it "home based care". In reality it is
women based care. They are the ones who have to deal with the sick and
the orphaned. Half the time dad escapes to the farm. "I need some
peace and quiet.These children are everywhere!" he complains. But my
mother has no escape. She has to be there. Of course it falls on the
woman to take care of everyone. That is the reality.

Old women are already struggling to care for others on their welfare
money. At the poverty hearings held in South Africa in 1997, elderly
women told stories of how they get beaten up by grand-sons and other
relatives to give over their money. They are often left with nothing.
These are the women who are expected to take care of the orphans. It
is the poor (read black),  women who have to bear the brunt of mopping
up. And if truth be told, long after the kaffaffle over affordable
drugs has died, very few will be there to help take care of these
babies. We shall soon be hearing complaints about how, "these people
breed like pigs. What do they think we are, soup kitchens? Do they
think we are just here to give and give?"  I have been around racism
to know it when it rears its heard. I am also middle class and I know
what we say in our circles about poor people.

Leave your mother an endowment

I have made my reproductive choices, because I know my reality and I
am trying not to be selfish. I do not want to deny anybody their
reproductive rights. But I have become upopular among my relatives for
reminding them: Please go ahead and reproduce if you want. Be a safe
passage for babies if you want. But just make sure you leave an
endowment for your mother, or whichever female will be taking over.

I am also angry because every-time I want to buy my son something I
can't. I have to think of the other kids. When I just want to take my
son out, I feel guilty, because I should also take the others. I deny
him what is rightfully his. Sometimes I have just chucked guilt to the
wind and given him a treat, but he feels guilty too, and reminds me,
"Ma, why is Colin not with us? You must also buy this ball for
Rejoice". My heart breaks and I am ashamed.