SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE: Gift Mangwende: "I resolved to create relationships that were not that strong"
Photo: Laura Lopez Gonzalez/IRIN
"My health deteriorated, I was psychologically challenged and it affected my social relations"
Pretoria, 26 September 2008 (PlusNews) - Gift Mangwende was diagnosed with HIV less than a year before starting his first year at the University of Zimbabwe in 2004. Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment brought him back from what he described as "a point of no return", but trying to take the drugs without his new classmates and lecturers noticing put his newly regained health at risk.
He talked to IRIN/PlusNews at the Imagined Futures III Conference at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, about that first year.
"I had to be at school by 8 a.m., which meant I had no time to have food before I took my ARVs. I also could not take my treatment on time [because of my class schedule] and the treatment of opportunistic infections was difficult because I couldn't tell the health worker in the [campus] clinic that I was HIV-positive.
"I also missed days when I had to go to the [ARV] clinic; then I had to produce a letter from the doctor to give to the lecturers, and the unfortunate part was that the letters were from an [HIV-related] research project that was being conducted at the University of Zimbabwe. Disclosure in that circumstance was evident even without me agreeing to it.
"My health deteriorated, I was psychologically challenged and it affected my social relations. I didn't want to get into bonding with people from my class because I thought, 'they are going to get into my affairs'.
"In that way, I resolved to create relationships that were not that strong, and that paved the way for a disadvantage in terms of my results because most assignments were done in groups.
"I had two options: to disclose and improve the situation, or continue missing treatment, lying about missing days, and lacking a social network. So in 2004, just after the first semester, I disclosed first to the dean and lecturers from the department and a few students in my class. It was at the orientation for the first years [new students] in 2005 where I made my first public disclosure.
"As expected, the results were both negative and positive; when I told the health worker at the [campus] clinic, she called all the other nurses and said, 'Look what this child has to say'.
"But in terms of my excuses with lecturers, I stopped that and created a group of students who supported me, and I can say that during my time at the University of Zimbabwe, that has been the greatest, most powerful [support] group."
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Theme (s): HIV/AIDS (PlusNews), PWAs/ASOs - PlusNews,
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]