Students Stories about HIV

This week in my life skills class I asked my students to respond to the question: How has HIV been a part of your life and/or changed your community?
The following are three of the more heart wrenching responses. This first poem is from a smart hard working student in my B3 class. The class is all students who have failed last year and it is really difficult to motivate them but this student is a bright spot.

HIV as a part of my life
It changed me, and
Turn me like a Skeleton,
I’m now looking older than
My age, all trousers and
Shirts I have are now
Not fitting me, I’m no
Longer good at all.


This virus seems like it’s
Sucking all my blood,
I can now compare myself
With a thin
Small finger.
It totally changed me and
This virus it’s sucking
Me.


Oh! Yea I have changed
The color and now I
Look black like grandfathers.
All I know is that it
Changed me so much.


All about me is that I’m HIV
Positive, and I seemed like a mad
Person, who needs help and care!

I shivered when I finished reading this poem. Not only this student but the boy who sits next to him also wrote me a story saying he was HIV positive. Both are the two brightest in my math class and took me very much by surprise.

Story #2:

When I was young
HIV became a part
Of my life, because
I was listening to the
People who are saying
Sex is nature.


I didn’t listen to my
Parents when they told
Me don’t do sex before
Marriage, and use condoms
When you do sex.


I think my parents don’t
Want me when I hear this
Nice sex


Today I am HIV positive
Because of refusing to listen
To my parents


Oh HIV go away
We don’t want you
You are a killer, how many
Peoples you have kill?
You are our enemies go away
We don’t want you.
Go away HIV go away HIV go HIV.

Story #3:

Four years ago my uncle was HIV positive he go to the testing council at Newstart, Botha-Bothe where he got that information that he is HIV positive. The members of Newstart told him to go and take ARVs but he refused. By that time my parents were working outside the country at Kimberly. So I advise him to go and fetch those tablets and he told me that those people are lying because he didn’t have unprotected sex with someone in the world. One day he became sick and I was supposed to give him help because I was only one staying with him. I tried to help him by all means, when I decided to touch him with plastic gloves when he was bleeding but he told me that I hate him and I just touch him by hands and his HIV affect me also.

Wow, Nthabiseng I am really sorry about your uncle. I want to know more.
Is your uncle still alive?
Who do you stay with now?
Tell me more about what you mean in the last sentence, are you positive?

No, now he is not alive he died last year at December by that time he was terribly infected by that virus, he was suffering from several things such as diarrhea, TB, and he was spitting blood coughing. My father died during the middle of the year of 2008 and I have just left with my mother and she is still working. I am just staying alone at my place now because even my grandparents are also died during the Lifaqane Wars. Yes I am also positive because by that time no one was taking care whether I can be prevented to that disease or not I was not going even at testing council, but when I tell my mother about this she take me to the clinic and I test and they said I am HIV POSITIVE and my mother was ashamed of me but there was nothing to do by that time, so I take the tablets from the clinic every month to treat this because it has no cure and it is dangerous. I was thinking that I am going to die but I realized that I can’t die because of that. I try to avoid it by all means and I don’t want to pass it to others. I don’t want even to be married because I will pass it to my husband and I don’t want to have babies because they are going to be born with it and die young.


These stories from my students has somewhat changed my perspective of my service. No matter how frustrated I get trying to get students to correctly add fractions I can only sympathize with the difficulty of their situation and can only view from the surface what it is truly like.