Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - Sunday 24 March 2002
Rowan Philp

If she ran, Dyala thought, her status would mean she and her child could never find someone else, and that she would die alone.

Finally, when she realised she had years of good health ahead, she chose loneliness over misery - but only got as far as the door.

Last month, prosecutors in Grahamstown charged Dyala's boyfriend with attempted murder after she was found in a pool of blood near her front door with her neck and arm slashed with a serrated knife.

This week, a recovering Dyala said: "I loved him, my daughter adored him, and he was supportive about my [HIV] status. But it was a destructive thing - the fights were huge - and the virus would already have taken my life if it prevented me from making important choices."

Dyala has not only won romantic freedom, but job offers, dating proposals and the status of campus heroine as well.

Here's how she escaped the HIV relationship trap: "I just told the world I was [HIV] positive, and I got my life back. When I told one guy, Matthew, he kissed me right there! Not for sympathy, he said, just because he said he knew he could trust me about anything."

This week, Dyala - wearing a cast on her arm and four large scars on her neck - was invited to address outpatients at the Aids Haven counselling centre in Fingo, Grahamstown, where she told women: "HIV is no death sentence, and I've found it doesn't have to sentence you to life imprisonment either."

A Rhodes staff member, Linda Futuse, 25, said: "Some people were shocked and scared when she said it. But anyone can see she is healthy, and she has proved that you don't have to stay in a bad situation, even with HIV - she's an inspiration."

Dyala, hoping to become a social worker, started a bachelor of arts degree with Unisa in 1995 while working at Rhodes as a receptionist, and got married in February 1997.

She divorced her husband in 1998, even though it meant dropping out of her course, alienating her parents and caring for her baby daughter Mihlali, now four, on her own.

"But that was an easy decision compared to leaving just a boyfriend when you have HIV," Dyala said. "With the divorce, I was at least confident I could find someone new."

She said she packed her bags to leave her boyfriend only after doctors convinced her that she had "probably more than five years" until she would need any medication to support her immune system.

"I had told [my boyfriend] that I would have left him long ago for this one other guy, except that I was afraid to put him at risk of HIV," she said. "Then I realised I wouldn't be sick for a long time."

Dyala said her sole lifestyle sacrifice caused by HIV was not being able to buy her daughter a puppy, since doctors had told her that pets were infection risks.

"I basically just live a bit healthier to keep my immune system strong," she said.

After being stabbed on February 19, Dyala - lying in a critical condition - told police and paramedics not to touch her blood without gloves.

She said: "But I also ask students to donate blood. When you're open, its easy to be practical."

Lifeline for students

HIV-positive students and staff will benefit from an undertaking by the Border Technikon, in the Eastern Cape, to provide HIV/Aids testing, counselling and antiretroviral therapy.

The technikon is the first institution of higher learning to provide antiretrovirals. According to the institution's director of student affairs, Vin Bhagwandeen, the aim is to allow students who are HIV-positive to graduate so they can play a role in society and take care of their own needs.

"This dispels the notion that HIV/Aids is a death sentence ," Bhagwandeen said.

More than R40 000 has been secured from an overseas donor, and the technikon has budgeted R400 000 for the provision of antiretroviral drugs.

Dr Costa Gazi, chairman for the technikon's HIV/Aids working group, said: "The process will only improve the student medical service because it will become relevant to the health challenges their generation faces ."

Neither Bhagwandeen nor Gazi expect government opposition, as the project was set up within the framework of legislation and in harmony with the directives of the Department of Education' s HIV/Aids programme.
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