My Turn by Anna Dao

The night before my presentation, I was crunching numbers. Gathering awful, dreadful, but all too accurate numbers from reliable sources. The statistics were to support my speech about this disease affecting the people of Mali, my country, and the entire African continent. I looked at the words written on my report:

Of the 42 million people estimated to be living with the disease, 29.4 million live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 5 million estimated adults and children newly infected, 3.5 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNAIDS/WHO’s Global Summary of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic, published in December 2002.

Finally, the estimated adult and child deaths due to the disease was 3.1 million, with 2.4 million in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The disease’s death toll on the continent “is expected to continue rising before peaking around the end of this decade.”

The next morning, I woke up early eager to start my day. But then, the phone rang. It was Lamine. Alpha was dead. And before I could ask, Lamine added, “The unspeakable bad thing.”  We cried. Then, Lamine filled in the blanks.

Alpha knew he was HIV-positive. He had known for years, but didn’t dare tell anyone. Instead, he got married and started a family. He was survived by his wife Sally and their three children. They had to be infected. But to ask them to get tested was out of the question.

“Words don’t have legs but they travel,” Lamine reminded me. “The minute I mention the word ‘HIV/AIDS,’ somehow, everyone in the neighborhood will soon find out. The disease will be attached to their names, their house, their lives. You know that.”

He was right.

“What can we do?” I asked.

“We could send them some money,” Lamine replied.

“Did you talk to Zeina?”

“Yes, she is sending her share tomorrow.”

“Lamine, how are you?”

“What can I say, little sister, this is the worst day of my life.”

Zeina, Lamine, Alpha, and I are best friends. Childhood friends who stuck together like the threads of a cover. We all went to the same school. Our parents made sure we received an education—even when, at times, we thought we really did not need one. Lamine became a doctor, Alpha got his Master’s in Public Administration, and Zeina and I went on to become executive assistants.

After graduating, we spent time together hanging out and partying. In those days, HIV/AIDS was a white men’s disease. We knew it was out there, but none of us knew somebody affected or infected by the virus. The illness didn’t concern us. 

I remember how we made fun of the few PSAs that were encouraging the use of condoms. A lot of Malians felt that it was an outrage to speak about sex during daylight. Serious people had better things to do—survive.

Then, doctors and social workers started making the rounds: going from neighborhood to neighborhood in cities, towns, and villages, talking about the new epidemic, AIDS. People were skeptical.

 “Fine, let’s say this illness does exist: Is it worse than malaria, drought, and hunger?” someone would ask.

“Death is nothing new, we all have to leave someday,” another person would say.

“How dare you young people come tell us how to behave in the privacy of our homes, with our wives?” an angry man would inquire.

“Why go to the hospital when getting there is a problem [miles and miles of walking] and we don’t have the money to pay for medication?” someone would ask.

“Our traditional medication, roots, and plants will cure us,” an elder would declare, putting an end to the debate.

But the traditional medication and the spirit of the ancestors did not protect, nor did they cure the illness. When AIDS didn’t go away, people got used to the periodic, unwelcome intrusions in their lives: PSAs, plays, and long speeches on how they could get infected, why they should get tested. Worse, they witnessed the distribution of condoms in broad daylight, as if the entire world needed to know that they were busy at night. The smallest case of fever or diarrhea raised suspicion and caused isolation among neighbors. Nobody wanted to be near someone with the unspeakable bad thing.

That was the early eighties. Things have changed since then—or so I thought.

But Alpha, one of my dearest friends, a well-educated man, had “the unspeakable bad thing” and couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone, not even us, his best friends.

One only suffers from the things one is hit with. Alpha’s death hit hard.

Anna Dao is from Mali. She works for a non-profit organization working to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and in Africa.

November 2004