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For Angelina Okeke (not her real name), life for someone living with HIV/AIDS is simply difficult.

After her husband
suffered a series of diseases – tuberculosis, syphilis, hepatitis, and
more, with rashes all over his body – Mrs Okeke literally dragged him
to the hospital where he was tested and confirmed HIV positive.

She too was tested
and confirmed positive. The next day she brought her two children, a
five-year old daughter, and a son who was going to be two in about
three weeks. Fortunately for her, the children tested negative. That
was April 2003.

“When my husband
was getting seriously sick, from one sickness to another, it’s this one
today, it’s that one tomorrow. He had rashes on his body. In fact at
some point, some parts of his body like the kidney, the liver, were not
working well again and the rumour was already going round that my
husband was suffering from AIDS. He was saying it was different things.
I went around explaining to his relatives, saying ‘Look at what is
happening’. They told him to go and do HIV test, he refused. When he
was very sick, we carried him to the hospital, that’s when they
discovered that he was HIV positive.” Mrs. Okeke said.

“The doctor said
that his own has gotten to the advanced stage of AIDS. He advised that
we should carry him (her husband) to the village and feed him with
vegetables. That’s what he used to deceive me, because he knows my
husband was dying.”

Journey home

Few days later, the
family travelled to their hometown in Anambra State. “In the bus from
Lagos here to the East, he was begging me not to tell his family
members and was begging God to help him. I said to him, ‘Is it now you
know God? Did you know God when you were sleeping around with other
women?” she said.

At the village,
everybody concluded that her husband’s problem was spiritual. They went
to different witch doctors in search of solutions but all to no avail.

“The family members
started asking me to tell them what is wrong with him, I refused to say
it. I told them that they should ask him; at least he was still
talking. But each time they asked him he told them not to disturb him;
that he was in pains,” Mrs Okeke said.

“The family later
got a herbalist from the neighbouring village, who prepared a
concoction for my husband to drink, claiming that it will cure him.”
Barely two weeks after they got to the village, her husband died. That
was on April 28, 2003

Widowhood

After the death of
her husband, the question was whether she would return to Lagos or
remain in the village. Even before her husband died, she had confided
in her mother and sister that he had AIDS and she was also positive.
When a woman who is a native of their hometown, heard, she advised Mrs
Okeke to return to Lagos to seek help at hospital where she can have
access to anti-retroviral drugs.

However, her
trouble started when she mentioned it to her in-laws that her husband
died of AIDS and she was HIV positive and needed to return to Lagos for
help.

“My mother in-law
said it’s a lie, that they have killed her son. She said that I cannot
go back to Lagos with my kids that I should stay in the village, go to
church; then take medicine from that concoction man. My husband’s elder
sister came and collected the key to our house in Lagos, saying that
she was going to arrange for our property in Lagos so that they can
sell them and use the money to mourn my husband (funeral ceremony),”
she said.

Mrs. Okeke said
when her elder sister heard, she was angry. She confronted her in-law
and took the key back and insisted that she must return to Lagos. Few
days later, she and her kids followed a man who was returning to Lagos
from their village.

“As we were going,
the man invited me to start attending The Lord’s Chosen church. He said
that their pastor has been healing people with AIDS. He dropped us in
front of our house. I started attending the church. But after attending
about three times, I stopped because the place was far, from Ajegunle
to Ijesha, and we have to leave very early before 7am, the children
will not eat, they will be crying and when the service is over, getting
a bus back is a problem because there are always too many people
waiting for bus,” she said.

Mrs. Okeke
struggled to make ends meet in Lagos, doing all forms of odd jobs at
restaurants, to. She was also depending on the goodwill of friends and
family. The woman who had advised her to comeback to Lagos had
travelled overseas when Mrs Okeke got to Lagos. On her return two
months later, she gave her money to offset her rent arrears and pay her
rent for another one year, with extra N30,000 to start a business.

“The woman told me
to be attending meetings, that the money she gave me was a contribution
from members of the association of women from our hometown that are
living in Lagos,” she said.

Stigmatisation and discrimination

According to Mrs.
Okeke she has suffered stigmatisation in different ways, but the most
touching was when her landlord sent her packing after learning of her
HIV status from a newspaper.

“I talked to the
reporter, but I didn’t know they were going to publish the story with
my name and my picture. That was how my landlord saw it and started
asking me to leave the house. I was still arguing with him until one
day he came and said, you AIDS patient you don’t want to leave my
house. The thing touched me so much; so I left,” she said.

In her new compound, a nurse encouraged Mrs Okeke to join a support group organised by AIDS Alliance, an NGO.

“When I went there
I saw people living with HIV. I discovered that they had accepted the
fact that they have HIV. I counselled myself that AIDS is just like any
other disease, it depends on how you take it. I started making friends
from there and I was happy. Once I comeback from one meeting I will
tick the date for the next on my calendar. Then my body started coming
back again because that fear has left me. I didn’t use anti-retroviral
drugs until March 2005 when I fell ill and it was because of the stress
I was going through doing all manner of business for money,” she said.

“AIDS is no longer a killer disease. It is the fear and the stigma that kills people.” Mrs Okeke added.

Future plans

With fear and
stigma now out of the way, Mrs. Okeke desires to secure a job that is
better than her HIV counselling job at Navy Hospital Ojo, Lagos, where
she is paid N20,000 per month. This she wants to do in order to be able
to raise her children, who are now in primary five and junior secondary
two, to the highest level of education. She has no plans of remarrying
but might consider a widower who is HIV positive.