“I have been living 22 years with HIV and if you look at me you cannot tell but I would not tell any and everybody that I have HIV because the stigma and discrimination is not nice and so I just trying to live my life,” the 46-year-old mother of six told me.
I chose to speak to women living with HIV, so that people could understand how some of them are affected by stigma and discrimination in the hope that it would help engineer change. Maybe one sister reading this piece might change how she treats people whose HIV status she is aware of, or she might just be more careful of what she says. I am still at times flabbergasted, to say the least, when I listen to people, who should know better, speak about the virus and how they treat those who are HIV positive. At other times my blood curdles but I always attempt to use the opportunity to educate or inform them, so that going forward they might stop to think before they speak or act.
Back to our sister who has lived with the virus for many years.
