She died yesterday

She is exactly 21 days older than me. At 21married her boyfriend of 4 years. They have 2 children, both boys and both healthy, but they lost one, who lived only for two weeks born when both parents were sick already. She told me her tale in 2005 when I was in Zimbabwe, and I did what I could to get her tested. I remember the wait for results. I stayed with her and kept telling her I was positive myself but I was not sick. She was sick. Her husband was sick but had refused to come for a test, the 'small house' (term used in Zimbabwe for concubine) was sick.

She never got to get ARVs. Zimbabwe prefers the sick to die, instead of wasting money earmarked for politicians to loot,on medicines for the ctizens. Her husband, now too weak to have sex with anyone, is being cared for by his mother. It was him who infected his wife, himself having had it from the small house and possibly others. There is othing more evil than a man and I hate men with a passion. There are times when I really have the urge to kill the lot of them.

The two boys will be orphaned soon. Their grandmother has no resources to look after them, so unless a do-gooder steps in, they are condemned to a life of abject poverty and will live at the mercy of those whose parents have been more careful. They are lucky to be boys because they have a much higher choice of whether they want to get HIV or not. Girls have little choice.

I am not angry, I just feel like the end is nigh for the human race. It interests me how a whole nation can ignore a death rate of over 4000 per week since 2001, when the cause of death is something totally avoidable. That is 8 years of 4000 per week and nobody bothers to see it as a national catastrophe, ot even employers, community leaders, church leaders, or anyone of renoun. it is a unique case of national self negligence.

Cholera has been treated the same way. The men of Zimbabwe are condemned to having an affinity for diseases and death. Totally avoidable diseases are just left to affect the wives and children. Nobody cares.

She will be buried today in a cheap coffin made by the other cheap men in her locale. Well wishers have sent in donations of cash in Rand. The husband is too weak to count it. He will have been told that his wife has died, he knows he infected her but he does not accept responsibility for her death. The last time I spoke to him, August 2008, he said, "If Vongai had been more sexual, I would not have needed to go out of the home." In other words, the fault was with Vongai, and for that she died yesterday, and for the same reason he will die soon. The two boys will be orphaned.