Living with HIV/AIDS in Sudanese capital
Nov 6, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Nine years ago, while working in Libya, Sudanese Professor Jalal Mohamed was diagnosed with a severe case of nostalgia. He was listless and had no appetite, but because he had passed all his physicals to work overseas, doctors attributed his malaise to homesickness.
When he returned to his native Sudan, Mohamed was diagnosed with HIV. His wife stood by him after he was able to prove that he was infected during a surgical procedure.
Today, at the age of 69, he is a spry, gaunt fellow who delights in his own erudition on his condition. “I am Mr HIV,” Mohamed told IRIN/PlusNews. “The infected are professionals [when it comes to] AIDS; you can’t tell us what we don’t already know.”
Like many in Sudan, he has faced overwhelming prejudice due to his HIV positive status, yet he approaches the disease with an almost unsettling fearlessness.
“I carry my death certificate in my pocket,” he said amiably, patting his trousers. “I’m not afraid of death; every dog has his day.”
Mohamed is a regular visitor to the Association for the Care of Sudanese People Living with HIV/AIDS, housed in a ramshackle building in a dusty ghetto near the capital, Khartoum.
Most of the centre’s 50 regulars come for what they call “awareness sessions”, which generally take the form of conversations over cups of tea in the courtyard.
Debate on a range of topics is plentiful, but when it comes to HIV, those present agree on quite a bit. They insist that much of the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS is more pervasive in Sudan’s Muslim north than in the Christian and animist south.
“Muslims think if you have sex outside of marriage, you are a wrongdoer,” said an elderly man who said he had to keep his identity “top secret” because he was afraid of losing his job.
“Muslims claim there is no AIDS in the north, only in the south,” said Badr El Din, a middle-aged Muslim man in dark glasses.
The association was formed in 2000, as a growing awareness of AIDS in east Africa forced even Sudan’s notoriously tight-lipped government to confront the growing threat of HIV.
According to UNAIDS, the adult HIV prevalence in Sudan as a whole in 2003 was 1.6 percent, while around 320,000 people aged between 15 and 49 were infected and another 34,000 had died from AIDS-related illnesses.
Although information about HIV/AIDS is now available in schools and in the media, those diagnosed with the virus find that personal prejudices still run deep.
“My wife left me,” said Faisal Hassan Mohamed, and then for a long time he said nothing else. “She was afraid of me.”
He is fairly certain he contracted HIV from an ex-girlfriend in Eritrea, but most at the centre would rather not talk about how they became infected, and very few admit that they got it through sexual contact.
Twenty-eight-year-old Sabir Ibrahim also admits he probably contracted HIV during his time in the Sudanese army, and says he had sex before marriage. His 18-year-old wife is also infected. He says his condition will force him to lie about how he contracted HIV or he fears will never find work again.
Others tell a similar story. Very few visitors to the centre have jobs, though every one of them was working before their diagnosis.
Florence was working at a university when she was diagnosed, and was “terminated” three months later. She knows that she contracted HIV from her husband after he had sex with another woman.
In Khartoum, HIV/AIDS comes with such terrible stigma that those who are infected rarely turn away from others who share their burden, and they all live in fear of the judgment of those who are not infected.
Bikela Khair, an Ethiopian refugee, has lived in Sudan since 1981. He lost his job as a driver after falling ill. Khair told IRIN/PlusNews that he was not afraid to die: “Dying will only take one day, whether I have HIV or not.”
He has a greater fear than death. “If I tell people I have HIV,” Khair said, “tomorrow nobody will greet me.”
(IRIN)