Letter to Precious: A teenager with AIDS from Soweto
It was twenty-five years ago this June that I first heard the news. I was sitting in a thatch hut in the savannahs of Senegal, waiting for the village chief to return from the mosque to eat breakfast with him. “Physicians in Los Angles have discovered a mysterious virus . . . ,” the male voice from the BBC in London began. But I paid no heed until the word “homosexual” made me stare at my shortwave radio as if the announcer was speaking directly to me.
For the next sixteen years every time I saw the forlorn face of a sick African on the cover of a magazine or read about the passing of another friend, I turned the page. I wore no ribbons, rode no bikes, stitched no quilts.
Then I found myself hiding underneath a baseball cap on the other side of town, hoping no one would notice me in a room of young Latinos and blacks in a public health clinic on the Southside of Chicago, as we waited for results from a test nobody wants to take.
“You didn’t expect this did you?” the Latina social worker said her arms crossed almost in a challenge, as I looked up from that print out with my name and the word POSITIVE underneath.
Little did I know that that piece of paper, meant to harbinger the end, would instead propel me on a journey into the far corners of the world, from South Africa through south Asia, and back to that Peace Corps village in Senegal.
Last December on World AIDS Day, I found myself standing before a class of college students—something I’d been doing for the past couple of years since traveling about in Asia and Africa and writing about the AIDS pandemic. But this was different; it was in the same lecture hall where I’d sat 25 years ago as a student myself. As I always do, I told them candidly about my status and about the struggles I’ve had living with this virus. I told them about how I have used yoga as a means of healing myself and helping others. But instead of telling them the stories I usually tell about the remarkable AIDS activists I’ve met around the world in researching my book: about the AIDS doctor in India who wouldn’t talk to me until I revealed my status and when I did, he revealed his as well; about the Buddhist monk in Thailand who runs an AIDS hospice teaching the dying how to care for the dying; about the communist social worker trained by Unitarians in the sixties who works with street children and drug-users in Ho Chi Minh City; about the Senegalese female sex workers that work in the shanty town miles from my Peace Corps village, who called out to Allah to protect me from death when I told them my status.
No, I decided to tell another story that snowy day in Indiana at my alma mater: the story of a teenager, like them, from South Africa by the name of Precious. I’d met Precious in a yoga workshop I’d offered at the AIDS conference there a few years ago. I described to the students how eager the participants in the workshop were to learn about how I had used meditation and simple yoga poses to relieve stress and take more control of my health. But at the end of the last workshop, feeling rather proud of myself with how well things had gone, this petite, young woman approached and asked me something I’d not considered. “I know you are a busy man, but how can we practice this yoga if we have no teacher? Could you come to Soweto to my church? I know many young people like me who would like to learn about yoga, but I can’t teach them. Could you come? It’s not that far?”
Here, I paused and looked out at these healthy students from good Midwestern families like mine, and I reminded them that though I practiced yoga I also had access to not only the most advanced treatment but expert physicians in HIV care, while Precious and many of the activists I’d met in South Africa did not.
“So what did you do?” A student asked.
“I took down her number . . . but I never went.” I tried to explain to these Hollywood trained 19 and 20 year olds waiting
for the triumphant ending in Soweto that I had a flight in three days and had no money; that I was afraid I might lose my job and thus my health insurance.
If you think it’s difficult to tell a room full of college students that you’re bisexual, HIV +, and have a history of addiction, you can’t imagine the disappointment on the faces of young people when you admit you’re failure to act in the face of those pleading for their life.
In talking to students I’ve learned to drop the Power Point talk with the statistics and charts, the scare tactics about condoms and getting tested, the attacks on drug companies, corrupt governments, the self-righteous moralism of institutions, economic disaster of world trade laws, and indefensible indifference of the both conservatives and liberals toward the rights of women and children and homosexuals around the world.
The story I wanted to tell those students from the small towns I’d grown up in was the story of how a young woman’s honest plea on behalf of her dying friends in Soweto had taught me about activism and spirituality and their relationship.
“My story doesn’t end here,” I went on that day at Indiana University, raising my voice and rescuing the attention of those students. “I was haunted by Precious and the other activists in South Africa who’d asked me to stay and teach and help. So, nine months later, I sold my belongings, left that job, borrowed money, applied for two more credit cards, and set off to Asia, back to Africa and into neighborhoods in my own city of Chicago to record the stories of those activists and people like Precious who prove day after day that they are not victims but a part of worldwide movement of activism that is confronting the fear that perpetuate this pandemic and in the process transforming themselves, their communities, and the world.”
I do not know if that young woman from Soweto is still alive or not, but one thing I do know, every time I speak, be it at churches or conferences or on college campuses, I know that the story of Precious and the thousands of other stories like hers of HIV + activists around the world from South Africa to South India to the South Side of Chicago are the ones that are the most powerful antidote to the greed, the indifference and fear that continue to perpetuate this disease.
For the next sixteen years every time I saw the forlorn face of a sick African on the cover of a magazine or read about the passing of another friend, I turned the page. I wore no ribbons, rode no bikes, stitched no quilts.
Then I found myself hiding underneath a baseball cap on the other side of town, hoping no one would notice me in a room of young Latinos and blacks in a public health clinic on the Southside of Chicago, as we waited for results from a test nobody wants to take.
“You didn’t expect this did you?” the Latina social worker said her arms crossed almost in a challenge, as I looked up from that print out with my name and the word POSITIVE underneath.
Little did I know that that piece of paper, meant to harbinger the end, would instead propel me on a journey into the far corners of the world, from South Africa through south Asia, and back to that Peace Corps village in Senegal.
Last December on World AIDS Day, I found myself standing before a class of college students—something I’d been doing for the past couple of years since traveling about in Asia and Africa and writing about the AIDS pandemic. But this was different; it was in the same lecture hall where I’d sat 25 years ago as a student myself. As I always do, I told them candidly about my status and about the struggles I’ve had living with this virus. I told them about how I have used yoga as a means of healing myself and helping others. But instead of telling them the stories I usually tell about the remarkable AIDS activists I’ve met around the world in researching my book: about the AIDS doctor in India who wouldn’t talk to me until I revealed my status and when I did, he revealed his as well; about the Buddhist monk in Thailand who runs an AIDS hospice teaching the dying how to care for the dying; about the communist social worker trained by Unitarians in the sixties who works with street children and drug-users in Ho Chi Minh City; about the Senegalese female sex workers that work in the shanty town miles from my Peace Corps village, who called out to Allah to protect me from death when I told them my status.
No, I decided to tell another story that snowy day in Indiana at my alma mater: the story of a teenager, like them, from South Africa by the name of Precious. I’d met Precious in a yoga workshop I’d offered at the AIDS conference there a few years ago. I described to the students how eager the participants in the workshop were to learn about how I had used meditation and simple yoga poses to relieve stress and take more control of my health. But at the end of the last workshop, feeling rather proud of myself with how well things had gone, this petite, young woman approached and asked me something I’d not considered. “I know you are a busy man, but how can we practice this yoga if we have no teacher? Could you come to Soweto to my church? I know many young people like me who would like to learn about yoga, but I can’t teach them. Could you come? It’s not that far?”
Here, I paused and looked out at these healthy students from good Midwestern families like mine, and I reminded them that though I practiced yoga I also had access to not only the most advanced treatment but expert physicians in HIV care, while Precious and many of the activists I’d met in South Africa did not.
“So what did you do?” A student asked.
“I took down her number . . . but I never went.” I tried to explain to these Hollywood trained 19 and 20 year olds waiting
for the triumphant ending in Soweto that I had a flight in three days and had no money; that I was afraid I might lose my job and thus my health insurance.
If you think it’s difficult to tell a room full of college students that you’re bisexual, HIV +, and have a history of addiction, you can’t imagine the disappointment on the faces of young people when you admit you’re failure to act in the face of those pleading for their life.
In talking to students I’ve learned to drop the Power Point talk with the statistics and charts, the scare tactics about condoms and getting tested, the attacks on drug companies, corrupt governments, the self-righteous moralism of institutions, economic disaster of world trade laws, and indefensible indifference of the both conservatives and liberals toward the rights of women and children and homosexuals around the world.
The story I wanted to tell those students from the small towns I’d grown up in was the story of how a young woman’s honest plea on behalf of her dying friends in Soweto had taught me about activism and spirituality and their relationship.
“My story doesn’t end here,” I went on that day at Indiana University, raising my voice and rescuing the attention of those students. “I was haunted by Precious and the other activists in South Africa who’d asked me to stay and teach and help. So, nine months later, I sold my belongings, left that job, borrowed money, applied for two more credit cards, and set off to Asia, back to Africa and into neighborhoods in my own city of Chicago to record the stories of those activists and people like Precious who prove day after day that they are not victims but a part of worldwide movement of activism that is confronting the fear that perpetuate this pandemic and in the process transforming themselves, their communities, and the world.”
I do not know if that young woman from Soweto is still alive or not, but one thing I do know, every time I speak, be it at churches or conferences or on college campuses, I know that the story of Precious and the thousands of other stories like hers of HIV + activists around the world from South Africa to South India to the South Side of Chicago are the ones that are the most powerful antidote to the greed, the indifference and fear that continue to perpetuate this disease.
posted by Unknown at 8:09 PM
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