I think epidemics, pandemics, wars and natural disasters visit earth from time for a purpose and each time they come they leave a trail of destruction and a renewal to human life.
They come targeting the lives of some people and in some cases they rejuvenate other people’s lives dramatically. The coming of HIV into my life ushered in a new kind of existence I never imagined could be so life changing in many positive ways as I see it today.
When I compare the kind of life I lived before testing positive and my life today I feel a certain kind of gratitude to God for saving my life in such a dramatic way. The life journey I have travelled with Mai Simba my wife in the last 37 plus years of marriage would make a very interesting movie if we were to document it as we lived it day by day year by year up until now and beyond.
I strongly suspect that I was already positive when I married Mai Simba around 1989 but had not been medically tested. In this article I want to pay tribute to this wonderful woman who has been a very strong pillar of support throughout my battle with life’s challenges and joys. Mai Simba has always stood with me during our most difficult times and most happy times too.
I met Sarudzai Mudzingwa who later became my wife, Mai Simba in Mutare’s Sakubva township where she was staying with her elderly parents in 1988. I was doing temporary teaching at Sahumani High School in the Honde Valley after I had been fired from my Department of Taxes job in 1986 and had experienced a life of destitution for some time thereafter.
Since I came from faraway Gokwe I had seen it prudent to rent a room in Mutare town where I would stay during weekends and school holidays because I couldn’t afford to go to Gokwe every weekend or school holidays then. I was neighbours with Sarudzai’s family as our houses were separated by a low mesh wire fence.
I bumped into Sarudzai while I was on school holiday in 1988 while she was hanging clothes on the side of their yard next to ours and as I surveyed her from top to bottom and bottom to top I felt in my heart that here was my wife to be. Most of my love life had been spent chasing prostitutes and serious love leading to marriage had for years never been in my mind after the loss of my first love back then. I felt I would marry only after I had acquired a course or career of some kind.
Sarudzai was a calm looking short, dark complexioned short haired girl and there she was going about her business as if her washing was the only thing in this big wide world. When she later saw me staring at her she politely greeted me from her side of the fence and I answered back looking at the most beautiful young lady I had ever seen. We chatted for a while and soon we were friends which led me to come to Mutare from Honde Valley every weekend just to come and look at my lovely Sarudzai.
A very intense love affair soon developed and soon her parents knew about it and they approved and soon they would allow me to take Saru for outings as long as I promised to back home with her before dark. Together we would visit all sorts of interesting places in Mutare doing everything we wanted except being intimate. Sometimes she would sneak out of her room jump across the low lying fence to come and keep me company during the night but we would only cuddle , snuggle hug and never did anything naughty.
In late 1989 I was lucky to buy the house that I was lodging at and soon I felt I could now marry my lovely Saru and start a family straight away. Since I was so much in good books with Saru’s parents it was easy for me to arrange to marry their daughter without many complications. My cousin who also worked and lived in Mutare handled everything and soon we went to Zaka Saru’s rural home and our marriage was sealed in the traditional way there.
All along I had never slept with my dear Sarudzai in the intimate way as she had insisted that would only happen after we were legally married and here we were now a married couple on our first night in our own wholly paid for house and a small second hand single bed as the most valuable asset in our whole 2 roomed house.
Yes, our first night was spent on a reed mate with a few old blankets to cover ourselves and it was so good sleeping there together, no HIV tests nothing.
In 1991 soon after our marriage I got a place at Mutare Teachers College a stone’s throw away from our house in Sakubva . Mai Simba was there now heavily pregnant and here I was now a student at MTC as Mutare Teachers College is fondly called with no regular income. My old widowed mother was there in faraway Gokwe needing my help to help care for my young siblings. Mai Simba’s parents had relocated to their rural home in Zaka and had sold their house in Sakubva. In March 1991 our first born Simba was born and at a time I had just started college as a day student. The good part though was we paid no fees at college so all the money that I needed was to sustain my family.
We relied more on money from our 2 lodgers but it was not enough. Soon I was forced to do piece jobs during weekends. At one time 2 ladies from the school I had last taught at offered to help us with groceries for the rest of 1991 and this was a great relief to us may God bless Miss Dhemba and Miss Marowa.
Mai Simba has stood with me during my life as a college student and she was there shining at my graduation that cool April day in 1994 .She was with me when I started teaching as a qualified high school teacher at Buhera High School infact ever since we married in late 1989 we have never been away from each other for more than a month.
When I fell ill in 1999 Mai Simba travelled with me to all the medical facilities I visited up to the time I was admitted for TB at St Luke’s hospital where I later tested HIV positive. She was there and took things in good stride when I later told her that I was HIV positive around 2001.She was there with me for 3 months in hospital sleeping under my hospital bed in the overcrowded TB ward full of frail coughing TB men.
She stood with me when all my 7 siblings accused me for shaming the family name by testing positive. I don’t really know what would have happened to me without this wonderful woman who later tested positive because of me and decided to stick on.
Today she reminds me to take my ART alongside her every morning and phones to ask if I have taken my daily dose when I am away from home. I really don’t know what this wonderful woman sees in me that keeps her so attached to me in such a loving way considering all the bad things I have done to her during our married life. I have done everything bad except murder.
Today I am a retired teacher based at home playing with our grandchildren from my 2 children and this April/May holiday was spent with all of them here in Gokwe and was it good to have them. My call to those who still think negatively after testing positive is that there is lots of life after HIV. One can still enjoy life to the full with HIV. We are a living example of a family of 3 people myself ,my wife and our now 32 year old married daughter and mother to 3 HIV negative boys who have lived and continue to live very productive and happy lives with HIV.
Due to issues of space I shall end here and resume my narrative in next week’s article. I am available on my mobile and email number below.
Maringwa Piason
*maringwapiason@gmail.com
+263774322043
