Within only 8 months…

October 3rd, 2009. 4:30pm.

“Karla, come see… girl…”
That was all of her Bissa I understood. I got up after laying all day mourning the death of my host sister. I followed her to “the house.” Oh wait, what’s going on? Why are we going to ‘”the house”? “The house” is the place where dying individuals are placed because if they die in the home, no one can stay in the compound.

I entered the house to find about seven elderly women sitting. And the “girl” lying covered by a cover. The “girl” was a 30 year old widow. She had been diagnosed with HIV in February. She refused to believe the doctors. She refused to fill the prescriptions for medicine. She refused life. So last week, she was placed in “the house”. And this week, Friday, she had passed.

I don’t know her reasons for not believing she had HIV and later AIDS. Maybe she thought it had “a look”. Or her symptoms weren’t what she expected the disease to possess. But she didn’t want to think it was her. And her grandmother didn’t want to believe it either. But it was only the two of them. Everyone else, including her mentally ill mother, urged her to take the meds. They knew it could save her life. There is a woman in our village living with AIDS. There is a man from a neighboring village with HIV doing so well, people think he has been cured. (This untruth will have to be discussed). But people are not ignorant about it. They know. They told her. But admitting it to yourself that you have a deadly disease is not as easy.

So I visited her. I was one of the first to see her deceased. I wasn’t expecting it. Her younger sister entered sobbing . I left. Two deaths in one day is a lot. Another blame game to be ignored. Time is too precious to waste it pointing fingers.