'I Control HIV': A Positive Liberian Mother Puts It

___The Burden of Care on An HIV+ Mother___

A mother breast-feeding her little one

Scores of HIV+ women who are in care at various health facilities in Liberia have called for a need to create an avenue for them to be self-employed. These women – predominantly single moms – have blamed stigma and discrimination for their limited or no access to livelihoods. “In the end, we turned into beggars because of our status,” they have said. Economic empowerment is all these women are hoping for.

A 25-year-old HIV+ mother in care at a health facility in Monrovia told her story in these words:  “Some of my friends who have HIV are feeling ashamed to come to the hospital for medicines. For me, I make it a duty to come here every day to get my medicines, rice, beans, fish, oil, cubes.

“But that is not enough. My husband abandoned several years ago. He, too, is positive but our four children are negative. His absence leaves me with the burden to take care of the children on my own. The children need clothes, medicines and need to go to school. This hospital is not providing all of that for me. I only get food and my own medicines from here.”

As a result, Helena resorted to doing laundry for various households in her neighborhood, in order to make the extra cash to meet other needs. But the stress in this activity is what is physically, psychologically and emotionally draining this young woman.

The above quote only reemphasizes the fact that the physical and psychological burden of HIV/AIDS falls heavily on women. This also has the propensity to persistently undermine the resilience of these positive women to the consequences of HIV/AIDS, and make adherence to treatment especially difficult.

Helena explained that in carrying out her laundry duties, she first goes around the neighborhood to fetch eight buckets of water by hand before beginning to wash the clothes, bed sheets and other fabrics. She does this per household and is able to serve at least two homes per day.

This young woman, like many HIV+ mothers in Liberia, is compelled to cope with life this way. Regardless of their own ill health, they still need to care for and manage their individual households.

This condition is, however, not unique to Helena. Beatrice is another HIV+ mother faced with harsh economic conditions. This 38-year-old mother of three children is one of the volunteers helping to retain her fellow HIV+ mothers in care at a local health facility in Monrovia. Although Beatrice doesn't seem deterred by her positive status, she is being heavily demoralized by her limited access to income-generation. All she desires is to have some funds to begin her own petty business in her neighborhood.

“I have been coming to this clinic to encourage my sisters and friends to remain in care. Some of us are very ashamed of coming here. Others are rather afraid to come for treatment because there are fingers being pointed at them everyday. So, for them, they always want to remain in hiding. But those of us who have the courage to put the stigma and discrimination behind us also have to face another aspect of life and that has to do with being able to make “small thing” (meager income) to feed our families and send our children to school,” she explained.

Seybah is the president of HIV+ patients at a health center in Bong County. Though she acknowledged that HIV+ patients at that facility were being properly taken care of, she was quick to outline what she described as their urgent needs in these words: “We get the drugs and we are responding to treatment. But the majority of us here are single mothers.  We need money to do business.

“We need to educate our children – the only gift we can give to them. We, ourselves, need to go back to school. Some of us are high school dropouts. We want our counselors, doctors to be properly trained to work better with us. The ones here are not encouraging us. As a result, there are fingers being pointed at us in the communities. We need shelter because we are staying with family members who are discriminating against us.”

"HIV Lives With Me"

But Lovetta Warner, another HIV+ mother, sees it all differently. In her testimony, she explained: “I am the former president of the Liberian Women Empowerment Network (LIWEN). I was diagnosed positive in 2002. I am 57. I don't live with HIV. HIV lives with me. I control HIV. To cope with HIV is to sustain yourself, do something with your hands to be able to feed yourself.  Like me, I have worked with my hands, sent my crouches abroad and through that, I have been able to build a house for myself.

“I have my own home. Being HIV+ is not the end of the world. It is not a death sentence. To hell with stigma and discrimination if I can sustain myself. Nobody can really know how they get infected with this virus. I was massively raped during the war. I have a daughter that I had before I got diagnosed. But she's negative. I have a friend to whom I will soon be getting married. He's negative. We manage it beautifully. We use condom and we have beautiful sex. But I am not a lover of female condoms. I rather he use it. He loves me a whole lot.”

Not every HIV+ mother might be as lucky as Lovetta to withstand the test of time. The fact that she has the support of her significant other keeps her emotionally strong and going. But not in the case of Helena who was left to fend for herself and her four children. Definitely not in the case of Dorcas Johnson, a widow, left to fend for eight children and herself.

Certainly without resources, economic empowerment, these women are vulnerable to abuses in every imaginable way. On the other side of the coin, there is also stigma and discrimination against them in their communities of residence. As stated above by Seybah, those HIV+ mothers who cannot afford to rent their own dwelling places are compelled to endure constant stigma and discrimination from close relatives and other family members with whom these positive mothers reside. This degree of insecurity – the threat of homelessness and destitution – leaves these women with few options. An ultimate survival strategy for many HIV+ women, especially younger ones, can be to turn to men for sex in order to buy school clothes or food for their children.