By Piason Maringwa
Every person has got one life to live on this earth and it is everyone’s responsibility to make the most out of that one life.
Being HIV positive is not a choice but living positively with HIV is a personal choice regardless how one acquired the disease. In today’s article I shall try to dwell more on some aspects that have caused a lot of harm to many people living with HIV which can be avoided leading to one enjoying a very long stress free life with HIV.
The Victim mentality.
In the early years of HIV a lot of donors both local and international rushed onto the scene to offer genuine and fake help to the multitudes of people then testing HIV positive. The proliferation of donors onto the scene and the fact that most people were getting tested for HIV when they were very ill led many to fall into the victim category because they had no choice. Many organisations sprouted up all over the place some on the pretext of helping the hapless HIV positive people. A lot of money was poured into bank accounts of these organisations purportedly to assist the positive people and like I said earlier on some were really genuine but others were of a dubious nature out to make a fast buck.
The whole landscape was awash with flashy land cruisers and other poshy off-road vehicles out to help the miserable HIV positive guyz and for sure a very good job was and continues to be done. The idea of helping HIV positive people led to many adopting the victim mentality in the hope of getting donor funding. Many HIV positive people began wearing pitiful faces in order to qualify for donations.
Some of the organisations began registering positive people in large numbers so a to qualify for more funds from main donor funders like USAID, WHO among others. The real HIV positive people benefited very much from the genuine organisations in the form of self sustaining nutrition projects but the perpetuation of being victims grew bigger. Some positive people began to believe that being HIV+ qualified them to receive food and other menial handouts at some point there was even talk of them receiving cash payouts.
Some even stopped working or developing themselves only waiting for handouts and donations. This mentality still persists in some HIV positive people up to this day and should be discarded like the curse it is.
Being HIV positive is not a disability and all people living with HIV have to work to improve themselves like everyone else. I for one failed to improve myself academically and professionally after testing positive as I thought that I would soon die so why waste my time and money on a future that was no longer guaranteed and here I am some over thirty years later with only a diploma in education when I could have done much better by acquiring degrees and become a professor or something much more prestigious. People should not limit or make themselves victims because of HIV.
Shame
I have always blamed those who unpacked the onset of HIV to the general public for making it such a shameful affliction which has made many people to shy away from disclosing their positive statuses publicly. The other day at our church meeting I asked those congregants who took Asthma or BP tablets to put up their hands and did I see so many hands in the air. When I went on to ask how many people took ARV tablets to put up their hands not a single hand went up and the silence that ensued showed that no one wanted to be associated with ARV tablets uptake. That’s the situation we have on the ground currently a lot of people living with HIV don’t want to accept their situation.
There is so much shame that no one wants to have their HIV+ status to be known. Sometimes it’s good to convince oneself that one’s life depends on oneself and not on anybody else. Those of us living with HIV should accept our situation and learn to live with it as comfortably as we can for our own benefit and not to please others .There is no need to be ashamed of being positive because you only acquired it while going on with your life like everyone else.
Fear
Fear is such a powerful force with enough potential to kill a whole man on its own and should never be allowed to take centre stage in our lives. There is a Shona proverb “Nyadzi dzinokunda rufu” loosely translated it means “Shame is more powerful than death” and I think it’s very true because a lot of people who commit suicide do so mostly out of shame and fear. I made a break through when I convinced myself that I was neither the first nor the last to be HIV positive so why should I worry myself to death. We also need to accept the fact that living in fear will not stop that which we are afraid of from harming us if it so wishes.
Let’s avoid negative feelings such as self blame, arrogance and complacency among others as we come to terms with our positive statuses. Let’s accept our situation and learn to live with it as comfortably as we can. Let’s work hard to improve ourselves and enjoy the benefits of hardwork as much as we can after all we all die whether HIV positive or not .Let’s free ourselves from the bondage of shame and fear and accept that we are people just like anybody else.
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