‘I survived because I got tested’

. . . Piason Maringwa
When I look back at my harsh past, a cold shiver runs down my spine as I realise how dangerously I have managed my life.
I am however, grateful to God for rescuing me from the master of the dark world, the devil who kept me in his web for over 20 years.

I have been a servant of the devil for the greater part of my life and I have reaped all the wages of my sin and among them the dreaded HIV.

There is no way I could have escaped this scourge considering that I had lived irresponsibly.

Today as I write 17 years after I tested HIV-positive, I feel that God has forgiven me for my sins because he is continuing to show me great kindness.

Isaiah 55: 7 reads: “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Through being HIV-positive I have found salvation and a new purpose in life which I never knew existed in me before.

Now I am a passionate Christian and spend most of my time trying to salvage those still wallowing in the mess that people wrongly call pleasure.

In this article I shall not dwell much on how I acquired HIV but on how I accepted and learnt with God’s grace how to live with it.

My passion today is to help others live positively and hopefully with HIV. I have to pass the message to all concerned parties without fail.

Honestly time is no longer on my side as I have wasted time toying with ideas without putting them into practice.

In 2001 I became very ill with what at first appeared to be malaria. I was treated for malaria at a local clinic at Mkoka in Gokwe South District.

Later on I was referred to Kana Hospital for further malaria treatment but my condition continued to worsen. I lost weight and lost appetite totally.

I was discharged and at home my folks suggested inviting traditional healers but I refused.

A local man whose wife I had slept with during my active days went around telling people that he had infected me with “runyoka” and all I had to do was confess my crime, pay two head of cattle and I will be healed.

All my relatives tried unsuccessfully to force me to confess, my mother was the most pained at my refusal.

I told them it was not “runyoka” and that I suspected it to be TB.

Later in August 2001 I suggested to my family to be taken to St Luke’s Hospital in Lupane.

I was now almost a skeleton having lost over 25 kgs, now weighing 29 kgs from my past 74-75 kgs.

The bus crew refused to ferry a dying man and left me at Ndimimbili Business Centre. My heart sank as I watched the bus rear lights disappearing into the night.

I refused to be taken back home as we would wait for the following day.

Fortunately at around 10am a pick-up truck carrying a voter registration exercise arrived and after much persuasion by my wife and late young brother, the driver finally agreed to take me to Lupane.

He also warned us that the trip would take much longer than we expected as they would be doing their work visiting various stations dotted around Lupane. We arrived at Lupane late at night.

I had been at Lupane when I was healthy and knew the booking houses where I had slept with sex workers, I told my wife to book for us for the night as we would go to the hospital the following morning.

Meanwhile my health was continuously deteriorating. I was now coughing chunks of blood with my sputum.

The following morning we arrived at the hospital and straight away joined the outpatients’ queue.

I was referred to a doctor who asked me to get an x-ray as well as a sputum test done.

The results came and I was found to be TB positive and I was admitted in the TB male ward.

There were 22 of us and each day a patient died and more were admitted until there were no free beds left, leading to other patients sleeping on the floor.

It was a nightmare in the ward as it was my first time to be admitted in a big hospital.

I never believed that I would leave that place alive and blamed myself for having refused to confess to the “runyoka” guy and die in the peace of my home.

Rumours also contributed to my fear as some would say the guy who worked in the mortuary walked around wards surveying patients and if he looked at you the next morning you would be his guest, how I hated that innocent man.

Each time he visited our ward I would look away until he had left, for fear of being his next victim.

I was put on TB treatment and soon I began to grow an appetite for food. My weight began to increase, I was on my way to recovery.

It so happened that when I got to the hospital I found the headmaster of a primary school close to where I had once taught, he was also admitted in the ward.

I was very happy to see him as I thought to myself at least I was not the only one, however, I could sense that he was not taking the situation positively.

He seemed to think that TB was the worst thing that could happen to him.

I had also known him before as a proud and very arrogant fellow and knew that it would be difficult for him to stomach the dreaded TB.

That year there was also a white doctor who appeared to be overzealous about his job and each time he visited he suggested that everyone in our ward to be tested for HIV.

We would ask him a lot of questions regarding the advantages of getting tested for HIV and what would happen to us in the event that we tested positive since medication was difficult to access at that time.

One morning five of us, including the headmaster, decided to be brave and get tested for HIV.

Each one of us went through a thorough counselling session and up to now I still suspect that it is the counselling that has kept me strong since that morning back then in 2001.

Four of us, including the headmaster and myself, tested positive.

Our wives were all there but I did not tell my wife straight away.

I kept it a secret until we went back home after I was discharged.

The headmaster was very restless after learning that he was HIV-positive. One day after breakfast I said to him: “ Do you know that we are very lucky?” He asked me why, I said I had seen a number of very ill patients who were sent back home because the doctors had failed to diagnose their problem.

“Look here, our condition has been diagnosed and we now know what we are suffering from and we are undergoing treatment.”

He replied that he was not happy to be in the hospital because October is exam time and he was worried that his seven pupils could not make it without his help.

I told him that examinations have been written before and they would continue to be written long after we are dead so it was better to concentrate on our treatment.

The headmaster refused and one morning we found his bed empty and we later learnt that he was caught trying to escape from the hospital.

Sadly he never reached his home alive but examinations were written as if nothing had happened.

I was later discharged and told to return for review later on. My health had greatly improved and so had my appetite for sex.

I had to inform my wife about my status. It was difficult, I toyed with idea for days and meanwhile we did not have sex for I feared infecting her and then I later broke the sad news to her.

To say she was shocked would be an understatement, she was devastated. Later she regained her composure and we discussed the issue.

I told her to go get tested so that if she was found to be negative I would maintain her and the children while I waited to die.

She refused to go get tested and said we would go on living like before, as man and wife.

I advised her to think seriously about getting tested and in the meantime we would have protected sex, and we still practice safe sex. She then tested positive in 2006.

I am happy to say that being HIV-positive has strengthened our love as a family.

Our last daughter, Rutendo who was born 21 years ago, tested positive at the age of six and she has accepted her status.

God has blessed us with the gift of acceptance which we wish upon everybody faced with HIV.

We feel blessed and believe that God gave us HIV not to punish us but to make us realise his love and power to help others to cope with their status.

We are a well known couple in Gokwe, known for the support we render to those failing to cope with their HIV status.