I am one of the privileged few in South Africa who has had access to wealth and, through wealth, to education. I live in a nice Cape Town home with a char and a gardener who help me uphold my lifestyle. Domestic help is the norm and as a white woman in her 30s, I have never known our household without a maid of some sort.
Consequently, on falling pregnant I always assumed that I would have help with my first baby, and on returning to work, I did. Triphena* has allowed me to leave my home in the morning with the assurance that my son will be cared for, the house will be cleaned and my life will be ordered on returning in the afternoon. After a year’s work she earned her month’s leave, so I coordinated my leave with hers and stayed home, while she returned to her family in the Transkei.
My return date to work was not met with Triphena’s return and a gnawing worry began to eat at me. “She’s sick,” was the message I received from a boyfriend or relative.
So I waited, juggling responsibilities and work schedules until her return the next Monday. Triphena arrived, accompanied by her sister-in-law, “to help me work”, she said. The worry turned to fear as I observed her now emaciated frame and the sores around her mouth. It is a dark fear that steals up on you and consumes every waking thought.
I try to help, as much for my sake as for hers. And I hurry her off to my doctor, because I cannot believe the clinic’s certificate she produces in explanation. “Flu” it says … but it compounds the fear. I await her dismissal from the doctor’s room and she emerges with a script for antibiotics and a firm recommendation to go to the clinic for some tests.
At this point I start to question, to probe, to confront. Will she go to the clinic? Will she have the test? And why has she not had the test? She shuts down, turning her unwell eyes inward and seeking rest. I bid her well and tell her to take another week off.
Each day that passes raises another question, another argument, another potential solution and my head is a mess with contention. The law is rigid in its protection of the employee who is under no obligation to be tested or reveal the result of an HIV test. And, up to this day, this has sounded reasonable and liberal. I want to do what is politically correct and legally enforceable, but the implications begin to dawn.
I hold my baby and wonder if I can I risk not knowing and allowing this little one to be exposed to the possible secondary infections of Aids, such as tuberculosis or pneumonia. Can I really pretend that nothing has changed and that my household is still a safe haven?
“Be honest with her,” my friends advise, “and get her to open up to you. Assure her that her job is not at stake.” So I sit her down in the lounge and attempt to have a frank conversation.
Her usual laughter is replaced with silence and I find myself struggling not to fill the gaps with reassurances to break the extreme discomfort. My questions are met with a nod or a shake of her head and no mention of HIV/Aids crosses her lips.
On the weekend I dial Triphena’s cellphone and it connects to the township half a world away. She is better, she says, and wants to return to work. “I have consulted a witchdoctor,” she explains and it is all the working of something she ate in the Transkei. My fear turns to anger at the bare-faced denial and sheer ignorance that inspires this explanation. How can she possibly believe that her normal diet has resulted in a weight loss of about 10kg or more, an inability to eat and a crust of sores around her mouth? This is a mature woman with a high-school education. I realise that she has seized this rationalisation to calm her fears and a vain attempt to reassure me.
Why am I surprised by this when I (and probably she) hear President Thabo Mbeki deny that there are links between HIV and Aids and our Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s claiming that anti-retrovirals cannot be used effectively in the treatment of HIV/Aids.
How much easier could that lounge conversation have been if I had been able to quote leaders who were open about the existence of the pandemic? How much more persuasive would it have been to cite role models, respected by Triphena, who are actively engaged in the war on Aids?
The diagnosis of a witch doctor explains away the necessity for a blood test and I am legally prohibited from enforcing one. Any possible discussion and counselling at the clinic as to how to manage the condition is lost, based on the protection of a person’s right not to be tested and I am left powerless and bewildered.
I have entered a world in which education has no place and the power of muti, magic and the stigma attached to being remotely associated with HIV build festering denial and rejection of the truth.
So I watch her and wait, fearing the worst with even the slightest new symptom. I continue to pepper her with questions, knowing full well that in so doing I continue to erode trust.
It is now eight months since that awful day when Triphena did not arrive at work and we have managed to sustain a tentative truce. She continues to care for my child and I continue to monitor her health, ensure that she follows a healthy diet and prescribe vitamins. Deep down my heart is still burdened with unanswered questions and fears. Our relationship somehow sustains itself at a superficial level and the void between employer and employee seems irreparable. A shadow of dread steals up on me as we near the time for her to take her annual leave again. And now I find that I am pregnant again.
* Not her real name
‘I see life in everything’
Riana Jacobs does not fear death as much as she fears dying alone, writes Safeeyah Kharsany.
Jacobs (29) is the only publicly acknowledged HIV-positive Muslim woman in Gauteng. Islam forbids premarital sex to the extent that, in some Muslim states, she would have been stoned to death.
In South Africa, the Muslim community is still grappling with the implications of HIV for its close-knit community.
Awareness programmes have been created to deal with the added complications of HIV, but feelings in the community have not changed. And so Jacobs faces the possibility of her death, alone.
“I’m very lonely … You know it’s [that I would like] having somebody to talk to … somebody that can understand me and not judge me.”
Each day she is forced to confront her survival. Her greatest fear is that she will never find a companion to love.
“You know when I have a bad day and I come home, that there’s somebody there …”
Many Muslim clerics believe that, to be closer to Allah, death should remain constantly in mind. Not a day goes by that Jacobs doesn’t consider death, yet when she was first diagnosed she felt she did not deserve divine love.
As she has grown to accept herself, however, Jacobs feels closer to God. And her understanding of Islam has changed.
“I look at a blade of grass and I see life. I see life in everything. It’s in the air that I breathe, I can feel him. It’s like you sense him physically there … before it was like Allah’s a supreme being there, you’re here … It’s like Allah became my friend.”
Jacobs was 20 when she met the man who infected her — an architect who was twice her age. Having had an abusive boyfriend in high school she wanted a relationship with someone who was more mature. “I thought, rather an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.”
She says: “I was involved in a relationship before with a Muslim guy [who] used to abuse alcohol … we used to fight endlessly.”
Jacobs believes in a direct approach in the war against Aids. To make youth aware of the dangers, she believes “they need to see people dying of the virus”.
Jacobs says people don’t expect to be infected until somebody close to them is, which is why she has chosen to speak out.
Just a few days after she was diagnosed, in 2000, she had to deliver the eulogy at a colleague’s funeral. The woman had died of an Aids-related illness, but was not open about her status.
“It was devastating, and people were gossiping because she wasn’t open. She was in denial … and stories were flying around at work.”
Two years before she was diagnosed, Jacobs decided to affirm her faith by studying Islam. Now, despite her status, despite having had premarital sex, Jacobs is still a Muslim who believes and observes her faith.
She has come to accept her status, but still experiences a great deal of pain.
“I always get oral thrush, vaginal thrush, your glands swell by your ears, armpits, groin … You lose weight, it’s never constant. I’ve had pneumonia, I’ve had bronchitis, I’ve had brain bacteria …
“The most frustrating thing is the exhaustion,” she says, because it is closely related to one’s emotional state. “With the depression I withdraw.”
But spending time alone has forced her to confront her demons.
“The moment you can look at yourself in the mirror without judging yourself, without ridiculing yourself … you [are] on the path of success. And that is what HIV has taught me, to observe life before judging.”