Around
the World:
A
LEGACY OF LOVE
by Joyce Maynard
Part Two
"When I walked
into the room, there were all these people who looked like me," she
says. "They were happy. They greeted me as if we were old friends."
Florence began accompanying members as they spoke in public about AIDS
and HIV. " I felt free," she says. "I couldn't be ashamed
anymore. I decided it was better to talk about myself openly than to let
people talk behind my back."
The group also taught Florence how to discuss her illness with her children. In simple language, she now talks to Ronald and Jackie about sexually transmitted diseases, her own infection, and the fact that she will likely die of AIDS.
"I told them everybody has to die someday, even them. It's a part of life. But right now, they know I'm healthy, and they try hard to help take care of me so I stay that way." Even Jackie, who's just 5, now regularly reminds her mother to take her antimalaria tablets, drink plenty of water, and eat greens.
When she first joined the group, Florence was haunted by the fear that one or both of her children might have contracted the virus from her, as she now believes their baby brother did. Many infected mothers choose not to have their children tested -- believing, as one woman puts it? "Why should I find out, when I don't have the money for drugs to help them anyway?"
But Florence took a different approach. "I wanted to know my children's status," she says, "so I could give them extra care if they needed it, even before they became sick. It was the most terrible thing to take them for those tests, but I had to do it."
The results came back negative for both Ronald and Jackie. Knowing that her children are not HIV positive remains her greatest source of hope. "My children can have long, healthy lives," she says.
PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
As painful as it is for Florence to imagine a day when she won't be there for her children, it's worse to imagine that day coming without having prepared for it.
The memory book project gives her -- and several hundred other HIV-positive women in and around Kampala -- a tangible way of doing just that.
Dona Abiniku, a 38-year-old schoolteacher and mother of two, and the only one of her mother's 12 children still living, writes for her daughter Perry about the happiness she feels singing the hymn "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth." She reminisces about how, when Perry was finished breast-feeding, she would say "Thank you," and she reminds her daughter of the plot of land that will be hers one day, extending "from the mango tree between John's house and ours, to the lemon tree."
Dona Abiniku with
daughter, Perry (left), and niece, Sarah
Rose Atibuni, a 43-year-old social worker with two children, writes about her hard times when she was a young girl, living in refugee camps in the Congo. She describes her hobby of batik-making and her daughter Therese's love of dolls. She tells of her courtship with Therese's father and her grief over his death of AIDS. " Try to postpone sexual activity for as long as possible, darling Therese, so you can concentrate on your studies," she writes. "I got infected due to ignorance. It has caused me problems I would not like you to go through. Please, please take control over your body and let no other person tell you what to do, that you aren't ready for. I love you so much Therese, I wish you the best in life.”
It's a 13-year-old girl named Gazia who best illustrates the special role a memory book can play in the life of a Ugandan child orphaned by AIDS. Her name means "denied by father." It was given to her because her father never married her mother according to proper custom, never provided the traditional dowry of rice, sugar, and a cow. Some people called Gazia "bastard." But to her mother, she was always "darling daughter."
For as long as Gazia can remember, it was just the two of them living in a tiny hut in Arua, a few hundred kilometers north of Kampala. When her mother, Christine, got sick and was diagnosed with HIV, her family -- including her mother -- shunned her, regarding her predicament as a punishment for a sinful life.
Christine found support among the women of NACWOLA. She had a talent for drama and an outrageous sense of humor, and traveled with the group performing in AIDS education skits. In the one picture of her remaining, she's laughing.
Gazia remembers the day last February when she left for school just as her mother was preparing to cook a chicken. When she returned that afternoon, her mother was lying on her mat, barely able to speak. A group of women brought Christine to the hospital. Gazia spent day and night close to her bedside, feeding her mother and washing her bedding. By the second day, Christine lapsed into a coma. On the third day, Gazia remembers, "I looked and saw my mother wasn't breathing anymore. Her eyes were open but she couldn't see me." The nurses told her Christine was dead.
That night Gazia returned to her hut to get her mother's shroud -- a piece of linen cloth Christine had purchased some weeks before. In the folds of the cloth, Gazia discovered the memory book her mother had written for her. It was too dark to read, so she put the book away. She remembers carrying it with her to her mother's funeral, but she still wasn't ready to open it. Unsure of what would become of her or where she would live, she gave the book to one of her mother's friends from NACWOLA.
That was more than six months ago. Today Dona comes to visit Gazia in the crowded, noisy, three-room hut she now shares with a group of her mother's relatives, bringing the memory book as a gift. (When asked how many children live in this place, Gazia thinks, then shakes her head. It's hard to say.) Gazia attends school, perhaps not for much longer. There's no money for fees. She loves net ball, but doesn't get a chance to play -- no shoes. Gazia sleeps on the mattress her mother left her. That and a blanket, a saucepan, some cooking utensils, and a couple of dresses are her inheritance.
Gazia opens the book
and for the first time reads her mother's words. "I was always good
at making mats," her mother has written (speaking of herself in the
past tense, as if she were already gone). 
"People
said I had a flair for performing, and I knew I could always make them
laugh. I was also known for my talent at cooking rice.
"Go to your father when you need school fees," she continues on another page. "Tell him firmly you need an education. If he says no, ask him again. If he says no again, ask him one more time. You must struggle hard to get what you need. I know it won't be easy. Study hard. Sex will come later.
"I love you so much," she writes. Present tense this time, not past.
As Gazia reads, her eyes begin to fill with tears. Dona puts an arm around the young girl as a single tear moves slowly down the child's cheek. Gazia studies the book for a long time before closing it and handing it back to Dona. It's too precious to keep in this place.
Part
Three of a Legacy of Love
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