Princess Kasune Zulu - Warrior Princess: Fighting for Life with Courage and Hope

1

Positive

M rs. Zulu, you are HIV-positive.

As the words touch my ears, the roof smashes open and the brightest ray of light bounces straight into my heart, or so it seems. The most wondrous sense of peace and calm fills my body. I am floating on a cloud and my heart wants to shout, Praise God!

When I recall that day, its like Im watching a collection of scenes from a movie. As the next scene unfolds, I see the kind, sorrowful face of my doctor. Short in stature, Dr. Tembo is dressed in a crisp white coat that lets you know you are in safe hands. He is heartbroken. In his eyes I am a condemned woman: he has handed me a death sentence, the diagnosis of a disease he is powerless to cure. Here he is, a gentle, humble man whose passion is saving lives, who has dedicated his own life to curing the sick. With a health system as brittle as Zambias this was always a challenge, and now this HIV has begun a systematic, deadly march through his country where it claims young lives at every turn. The doctor is at a loss for words. So how can I tell him my heart is filled with the greatest sense of hope? While the words arent audible, I can hear them clearly: say Praise God.

Now words and images from my past are flooding into my mind: the skeletal frame of my baby sister as she wastes away, the faces of the sick I nursed in the hospital, my mum coughing and struggling to carry a sack of maize, a series of photographs from a pink book, my dad lying alone in a hut and above all a string of words that has remained a mystery to me for some time: I will go before you and I will level the mountains; so you will know it is me who has called you by name. Aha! So, this is it? After all this time, here it ismy mountain. At once I know this virus is my reason for being. This is why God put me on earth. HIV is my cause, my mountain to climb.

In January 1998 most Zambians know very little about the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. But having read a pink-covered book lent to me by a nurse, I now know. I know what Dr. Tembos diagnosis means. I had read the book several times over, had studied its pictures and reeled at the list of symptoms this virus causes as it takes over a body. I had tried for months to be tested myself; first the hospital turned me away and then my husband denied me permission. But finally we made it, and I am HIV-positive. I know what this meansyet here it is, my heart beating strong and an inaudible voice beckoning me to shout Praise God!

I try to refocus, as Dr. Tembo is about to give my husband the results of his own test.

With his eyes respectfully cast down at the floor, Dr. Tembo delivers the news: Moffat Zulu, I am sorry, you are also HIV-positive. Moffat remains silent.

Feet firmly back on the floor I ask, What next, Doctor?

Well... I am so sorry to inform you there is nothing that can be done, not here in Zambia. The treatment is just too expensive. You may only have six months to live.

Just one year earlier a Taiwanese-born researcher named David Ho, the son of refugees, had created a cocktail of drugs that successfully suppressed HIV. Time magazine had named Dr. Ho Person of the Year. But Hos drugs had yet to make their way to the poor, remote township of Luanshya where few, if any, could have afforded the ten-thousand-dollar annual price tag. Even five years after Dr. Hos By the time the cocktail of drugs became more widely available, millions would have already died.

When Moffat and I emerge from the drab atmosphere of the hospital into the clear light of day, Moffat looks shattered. His shoulders slump, his feet plod. At first his eyes seem to search for answers, for hope, for a miracle, but within seconds a dull look of hopeless resignation takes hold. He says farewell as he sets off for work. To me, though, Luanshya looks brighter, different somehow. I see the world with new eyes as I make my way toward the road to hitchhike home.

As always, it doesnt take long to get a ride, and I am soon riding in an old blue car. The padding has been pulled from the inside of the doors, revealing rusty blue metal and the workings of the worn-out door latch and window handle. Not long after we set off, my driver hints I might like to pay for my ride with sex. Sir, please. I am a married woman, I protest. But I learn its going to take something more to deter this relentless driver as he tells me, I am married too. Thats okay.

Well, sir, I am a child of God. I am faithful to my husband.

We are all Gods children, my dear.

Hes not giving up. I know its time to drop my bombshell. Sir, I am also HIV-positive.

While this mans attitude is extreme, for me, a beautiful, voluptuous twenty-one-year-old woman, the proposition is not uncommon. It has never troubled me before as it seems like just another part of life. But not today. Today things have changed. How many of these drivers carry the virus around our country and back home to their family? I find myself pondering.

I look at the run-down old cars and trucks driving all around us and shudder in disbelief. My beloved Africa . I now see this vast land taking the form of a woman. If Zambia is her landlocked heart, I picture her long legs stretching out across Zimbabwe and Mozambique and down into South Africa, Botswana and Namibia while her arms embrace Malawi, Tanzania and Angola. Her elegant neck and head rest comfortably in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am struck by the image of her roads and highways serving as arteries, pumping an endless flow of virus-carrying vehicles from her hands, feet, arms and legs through her heart and back again. If fighting this virus is my calling, it is clear I have my work cut out for me.

So how did I get here? What journey did a hopeful young girl take to arrive in Dr. Tembos office on January 2, 1998, to be given the news I am HIV-positive? My story begins like this.

10

I Have to Know

I t was a basic book but it told me all I needed to know about this illness. When you first contract it, its called the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, the book said. But by the time a person becomes sick and dies, the virus has progressed to a stage called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, commonly shortened to AIDS. According to the book, it was a new disease first identified only in the early 1980s, for which there was no known cure.

The pink-covered book began by describing the ways HIV is transmitted: primarily through sexual activity and blood transfusions but alsofrighteninglyfrom a mother to her child. It showed photographs of a person looking healthy and then, in the next shot, the same person wasting away, pale and weak with big burnlike blotches on their skin that fill with fluid. From this pink book I also learned that it is not AIDS that kills you. Rather, the virus weakens your immune system so you become vulnerable to other sicknessesopportunistic infections that become the killers.

So many things became clear with this book in my hand. This virus must be the reason so many people were dying in the hospitals, cities and villages. In fact, the book said HIV had already taken hold across Africa, where a combination of factors meant this pathogen could spread like wildfire before we even knew it existed: few people had access to television, literacy levels were low, governments could not afford broad-scale advertising education campaigns; cultural practices like polygamy did not help and then there was our health systempowerless against the rising tide of infection. The virus spread across the world, hitting gay communities in the developed world.