Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - January 13, 2008
Deane Nyandoro

He stops. He is not sure whether we have indeed been invited to interview Henry (not his real name) and does not want to be lynched for showing us the way. We proceed alone.

Henry had been seeing a doctor in Harare and now lies at home in home-based care. Aids has found its way into this remote African community.

Henry lies in a little hut that is being swallowed slowly by the afternoon sun. It is hot within the mud walls and mosquitoes in this malaria-infested region sing a sadistic chorus of death.

A frail outline is visible on a bed made of reeds and I realise we stand before Henry. I take a seat on a little empty tin.

At 22, one would expect Henry to have a long life ahead of him.

He heaves and tries to smile. I cannot hide my shock. For when he agreed to talk to me, I thought I would have a chat with the young man I had last seen a few months earlier.

No one had known that Henry was infected with HIV, at least none in his community.

"I kept it a secret as I had only just discovered that I was positive.

Initially I had just been told I had tuberculosis," he says.

I was trying to conceal my bewilderment. How he had wasted in only four months.

"It's okay, I have learnt to live with the fact that people are shocked upon seeing me now. However polite you want to seem, I know I am not the young man I used to be," he says.

"I blame the country and economic woes, the lack of qualified personnel in medicine to help me deal with HIV shortly after finding out I had the virus.

"I followed their calls that being tested was the biggest and most important step, but I have found out that that is just a small step. After that the road to living positively is ill-defined. There are no drugs and I experienced trauma in my quest to know how far into my illness I had gone," Henry says.

Right after he found out about his status, Henry went for a CD4 count. "It was then I learnt that the CD in CD4 count in Zimbabwe is often an acronym for Certain Death," he says.

His faint heartbeat is barely visible through his ribcage.

"I wanted to determine whether to start on ARVs or not.

In Zimbabwe, where we pay for drugs through the nose, early treatment is a bit of a luxury."

Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, never mind the continent, and Henry was a true child of the Zimbabwean revolution.

Henry continued: "The first time I went for a CD4 count, the result was 340. In other nations that would be a precursor to taking drugs, but in Zimbabwe, the drugs provided by the government are for those who are extremely in need of them.

And even then, they are mostly out of stock in poorly run government hospitals."

After going to Harare, Henry fell very ill and was diagnosed with septic tonsillitis, prompting him to visit another doctor.

"My new doctor, Dr Nyik a Mahachi, implored me to take another test despite a mere week's lapse after my first count. I could not believe him when the results read a mere 110 CD4 count," he says.

Tears well in his eyes, but behind those tears lies the remarkable strength that characterises the human and African spirit.

His grandmother implores me to stop, to give him a rest and to let him think through his decision to talk to me.

"No!" he screams. "I am ready to talk. Only then will people learn from my ordeal. I believe it happened so it could be talked about and others could learn."

He refused to take antiretrovirals after the low count, still insisting he was okay and in control of the virus.

After two months in denial, he went back to Dr Mahachi, who told him to go back to the first doctor and conduct a repeat test. This time, the result was 453.

"When I got back to Dr Mahachi, his assessment showed my CD4 count as 113.

This time I decided to see sense in Dr Mahachi's diagnosis.

"That is when I started on a prescribed set of ARVs and I am a lot better now, however wasted I may seem," he says.

"We will overcome and soon we will have good equipment that can read CD4 counts and we will again have a good economy that can provide for ARVs for all in need, not just those classified as desperate cases. One laboratory let me down and almost killed me out of the ignorance they planted in me."

His grandmother comes to feed him mealie-meal porridge. "I have to eat and this porridge helps. The ARVs need to be accompanied by food," he says.

I sit at his bedside as he rests. He falls asleep eventually and has stopped groaning. He is at peace, I think.

Henry died two months after the interview.

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Nyandoro is a Zimbabwean journalist writing under a pseudonym

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