World AIDS Day 2014

Today is World AIDS Day 2014.

Know your bodies

The stats may not be fully known, but the estimates are in the millions of those who have gone by reason of AIDS. Big names, somebodies, 'any bodies', nobodies, the first two probably knowing and finding some respite maybe in medicine to arrest the rampaging HIV that presents AIDS.

The 'any bodies' are those who probably do not know that they have HIV and might well learn that they have it when they have developed AIDS. Yet not all hope is lost, people with medical intervention have come back from the life-threatening claws of AIDS to live lives just affected by HIV.

The nobodies however are those who have despite knowledge of their conditions neither have access to treatments, monitoring or drugs to arrest HIV and eventually succumb to AIDS.

Knowledge is progress

My view of the World AIDS Day is for the 'any bodies' and nobodies to become somebodies, people who know their status because they have access to be tested regularly. Who when tested have the counselling and information to make informed choices and if found to be HIV positive have access to medical expertise and drugs to live productive lives.

Being infected with HIV does not have to be a life sentence, it is a manageable condition with easy to use medication and a wealth of support and expertise that means no one has to suffer alone.

Beyond this, we need to move beyond the stigma of HIV and AIDS. All sorts of circumstances might have brought on the disease by commission, omission, happenstance or accident, there is no need to be judged or be judgemental.

Knowing the truth

We also need to move the management of HIV/AIDS out of the domain of desperation where charlatans, snake-oil merchants and so-called faith healers prey on the vulnerable for profit and fame.

HIV/AIDS is a medical condition, first and foremost; any assumed or considered change to that condition must always be assessed fully from a medical perspective. This is regardless of whether the person believes they are healed or they believe progression of the disease has been halted.

It is pertinent that HIV/AIDS remains under the supervision of qualified medical personnel.

Know your life

And so, on this World AIDS Day, this is what I advise.

• ·         Know your status and renew this knowledge at least every year. Get TESTED regardless.
• ·         If your status indicates being HIV positive, seek immediate medical intervention, you might be put on ARVs and these drugs are usually free.
• ·         Do not for the fear of the knowledge of your status allow HIV to waste you away, there is abundant help for you to have a useful life.
• ·         If you have exposed yourself in unsafe activity, enquire if you can have access to PrEP, this like the morning after pill.
• ·         We are all sexual beings, it is a natural human need. Do not be embarrassed about your sexual life that you deny yourself opportunities to live longer after you have discovered you have a sexually transmitted infection, no matter how minor it looks, seek help and remedy.
• ·         Learn more about HIV/AIDS and know how to keep your health and yourself safe.

The AIDS Ribbon is courtesy of PhotoBucket

December the first - for those who live with it

A story to tell

He was sent home to spend the last of his days from France. One cannot remember what he was imprisoned for, but when they found out he had it he was offered compassionate leave.

As time seemed to run out, he dedicated himself to writing about his life, his loves and what would have been – as a computer buff, one could see that his job was made the more complicated by an unintuitive word processor called Microsoft Word 1.0.

He did tell his tale, just before he slipped into the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

An opera beyond a soap opera

The most jovial and effervescent man he was, the quintessential opera queen, he had well over 5,000 classical and operatic albums and had written an encyclopaedia of opera.

He had enough insight to suggest that Maria Callas was not so much of what people made her out to be.

When we gathered for his 38^th, one was oblivious of the fact that we were not to celebrate another because one opened the pages of the Evening Standard to read of an interview he had given just a week before he slipped in the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

No eclipse darkened the day

In the week that Europe saw the total eclipse, was there a chance that love might blossom or not? Infatuation enveloped the minds of the two who thought there was a future but neither was aware of how long it might be.

Documentaries of one who suffered like it was the last night and that happened 4 times over many years – 22 years on, it looked like a sentence then but the no-hopers of yesteryears are living prosperously today – they have not slipped into memory, rather their fellowship is renewed in friendship and assurance that a future always exists for those who seek to live and love life.

The news of hope

And so the news came as years now add up to 6 and much more, and what was expected was not what was observed; anger, denial, shame, fear, frustration, guilt, despair, sadness, depression, confusion and dejection gave way to one critical emotion required on hearing such news – Hope.

Nurse was empathetic beyond measure as he cried tears and the hearer of the news consoled him – a time has come when if you heard the news, it was no more a personal death sentence but an opportunity to make life worth living.

They go on to do great things and no one is any wiser about the great burden they carry as they make light of that to concentrate on doing even greater things.

They will live

Then around the world, the urgency to act is caught up in the politics of complacency, but thankfully, we would no more be prescribed beetroot but tablets that help mother give child life, that helps child avoid the orphanage and lets the people continue to be productive members of society.

We shall not be identified by labels of separation and pariah, but live to celebrate anniversary after anniversary of those who live with a sentence but not one of death.

We shall see more days

Today is the twentieth, it would not be long till the fortieth – those who have slipped into memory encourage us to be heroes and those that remain teach us to understand our humanity even more so.

We shall not suffer in silence, our footprints shall be etched in the tablets of reckoning even though the sands of time blow over them – when the tablets are recovered, they who decipher the code of ages past would learn that they did not all perish – hope kept them alive and they were alive with hope.

Today is a day to celebrate hope. Hope, believe and live.

Sorious Samura - Living with Corruption

Living with exposing the truth

Sorious Samura makes compelling viewing, he takes reality television to the extreme – rather than being the observer-reporter he becomes participant-reporter, his report then becomes an experience that draws the viewer into the heart of the matter.

Sorious has become a crusader of sorts shining the bright light of scrutiny on all sorts of questionable activities around the world, looking at the underbelly of society and bringing information we never get to hear or see through establish channels of information dissemination. He tells the African story as an African in Africa with an African perspective - sometimes, it is the Africa you do not want to see, but it is an Africa that is real an out there.

His style is not “Michael Moore”, it goes deeper and further but what should result is that we be filled with indignant rage to find ways to correct the injustices we see around us.

Living with stark realities

Sometime ago, I watch Living With Hunger and saw how people scraped and scrapped to exist, they ate plants that gave them a rash you began to see how the body almost needs anything to keep alive – the pictures endured, it was disturbing.

The Living with Collection also includes Living with Refugees and Living with Illegals both of which I saw on CNN, I never saw Living with AIDS my imagination had gone ahead of me to save my sensibilities from that depiction.

This morning I woke up to the much advertised Living with Corruption on CNN International, it had already been shown on Channel 4 in the UK as a Dispatches: Society programme under the title How to get ahead in Africa in October.

Living with corruption

In Kenya and Sierra Leone which one might say are microcosms of the greater Africa he shown how people in the “under-class” are squeezed to the pips by petty officials who line up to extort from those who have literally nothing to even get by.

Looking for day labour, he found work but two-thirds of his pay had already been taken by bribes to the gateman who lets the workers in and the supervisor who dishes out work.

Building a shack in the slums, “chancers” took their cut under threats of reporting to the authorities who were themselves corrupt, by the time he got his empty shack up, he had parted with literally a month’s salary.

You don’t know Kenya

The impunity of it all was exemplified in senior officials that got away with presidential pardons or a minister who when confronted with accusations that he had appropriated land that does not belong to him first fought back with accusing Sorious of having an agenda then said Sorious did not know Kenya.

An AIDS orphanage in dire need of aid was unable to access funds because the angelic proprietor of the organisation could not fork out the 10,000 Schillings required by corrupt officials to register her community based initiative – Sorious, parting with the same sum was able to register his bogus initiative and complete the process in two days in what should take two months. – It was heart-rending.

It was saddening to see how we hear of all the aid going into Africa but none seems to get to the people who are the symbols of what makes organisations and people give aid. Anti-corruption drives simply get bogged down in the political process and get hijacked by special interests as tools of oppressing others.

Usually, it is the middleman without any godfathers that gets caught and they are never the ones who have siphoned moneys off to foreign accounts. The heads of government and ministers who have done too well with the resources of their countries also need the collusion of Western financial institutions to launder their ill-gotten gains.

Scented soap for teacher

His return to Sierra-Leone also showed how children are already schooled in corruption, teachers demanding scented soap, toilet-roll and money to mark the papers of their pupils – the headmaster had to go through hurdles to get paid, these hurdles were tips, here and there to people who are paid to ensure these jobs of administration are done.

I remember times in polytechnic when I had to pay for tutorials and handouts we were told the questions appearing in the examinations would be derived only from the paid-for material rather than the proper curriculum – you could be assured of failure if you did not subscribe to that corrupt enterprise.

There were times as a consultant in Nigeria, there were grabbing hands all around the place, those who felt each time a payment was made they must have a cut – I was able to use my slight detachment from the society because of my accent to state that they had to make those arrangements in their internal systems and it must never appear in my direct transactions, the bank teller even thought he deserved part of my pay when I cashed my cheques at the bank.

The big message of Living with Corruption was simple – To make poverty history, you have to make corruption history – if there is a political will to do that and a society responsive to the abolition of graft is another matter altogether.

You can find all these films and documentaries at the Insight TV Store.

A snippet from Ethiopia - Living with Hunger - YouTube link

Sorious Samura on the Living with series (YouTube Link) a 24-minute frank talk