TENSION by Mwangi Gituro

*****

‘The sheer thought of it gave me butterflies in my stomach. Doubt of the outcome was however the last thing in my mind. An iota of reservation and I would have shunned the place like a haunted castle. I was doing it for the sake of doing it you know. Everybody was doing it (or at least pretending to have done it). It seemed the in thing to do. The media was leading the publicity campaign detailing the numerous benefits while the politicians chipped in with their sweet nothings as usual.

I’m not quite sure why I chose a place that was away from home but again, it was not the kind of place you’d want to bump into a friend or worse still, a friend of your mother’s. I had located the place several months ago and I was only waiting for courage to accumulate to a stable level. That Friday afternoon, as I sauntered along the corridors of G.P.O Mombasa, my heart was overflowing with courage and I found myself wallowing in the miasma of confidence. Past Bima Towers, I stopped and looked across the road and there was my destination: Youth Counseling Centre. I crossed the road and approached the worn out building. My mission was simple; I was going to confirm what I thought I knew so well. To say the truth, I wasn’t equipped for any surprises.

I made my way up the stairway and found myself in the secretary’s office. Behind the desk sat a girl whom you could not describe as beautiful. A new word would have to be invented for her. Beautiful was definitely an understatement. On seeing me, she wore a smile that could have thawed the entire North Pole. Me think she liked me.

“Welcome to the YCC and how can I help you?” she said. She was not only good looking but also a darling; a rare combination.

“Maybe you and I can hook up for a date later on but in the mean time, I want to take the big test.” I told her rubbing my palms together and running my tongue across my lips all in the name of trying to look cool. Hell knew I was a total freak in the inside.

“Eeeeeh…I can organize for the latter.” She replied then added, “As for the date, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Come on now beautiful, you can’t turn down an offer from such good looks, can you?”

“There’s more to life than good looks misterrrrr…….”

“Zulu. Please call me Andy.” I offered not knowing I had committed a grave mistake of leaving my identity at the centre but again, I assured myself, that was the concern of those who turned positive.

“Please take a seat and I’ll speak to the counselor”

I waited in their lobby where several youths were watching TV, playing indoor games or just chatting among themselves. I was glad to note that none of the faces was familiar. The programme being aired was a national geographic series on cats of the Mara. It compared the hunting habits of lions, leopards and cheetahs in the Maasai Mara. One scene showed a lion having sex with a lioness in the vast savanna grasslands

And I thought ‘how cool’. The beasts could do it anywhere, anyhow without any care for what Nameless, Swaleh Mdoe, Fundi Frank, CMB or the Kleptomaniacs had in their pockets. The beasts had maintained a natural lifestyle and everything for them was done naturally. Just as God had intended.

After twenty minutes of sitting in the lobby, the secretary beckoned me and my heart skipped several beats. As much as I wanted to convince myself that everything would turn out ok, there was this awful fear that kept creeping in my thoughts. What if the test kit turned faulty and gave the wrong reading? What if my immunity levels were high because of some other infection unrelated to Aids? At least I had learned that what they test for is the number of CD4 cells in the blood. Of all my ‘what ifs’, it never occurred to me ‘what if I was really positive?’ I was very so in denial.

“The counselor will see you now.” Was all she said and led me into the chamber. ‘It is now or never’ I said to myself. I still had the option of turning back and forgetting that such a place ever existed. ‘But what is the worry about?’ I assured myself. I had to be negative for sure. I wasn’t coughing, wasn’t having an itchy pain on my you know what, I wasn’t even having those funny rashes guys with aids had. I definitely had to be negative and this was just a routine test.

“What inspired you to pay us a visit?” asked the counselor who introduced himself as Macharia but insisted on being called Masha.

‘The desire to join a list of dudes and dudettes who have done it as a publicity stunt. ’ I wanted to say but instead said “to know my status so that I can make adequate plans for my future.” Isn’t that what they all said on telly?

“Have you ever had sex?”

The question threw me aback a little. Unless the guy was blind, I was a twenty year old, handsome to a fault on any female scale, well equipped with what my buddies at home called mikoba and to crown it all, I was in campus where the sex gift was unpacked and exchanged every single night. Yes I had ever had sex. Not once, not twice, not even thrice hence I chose to answer “well I could be termed as a constant gardener.”

If Masha was ever amused by the way I put it, he never showed it. He went ahead to ask how many partners I had slept with in the past one year to which I gave him a range between five and ten. Did I know my sex partners quite well? Yes I did. A good number of them were my course mates while others were contemporary campus beauties I had met in bashes around campus.

“Have you been using protection in all those encounters?”

‘Hell yah!’…………………………………..”Yes I have”

When he asked whether I had ever woken up on the same bed with a girl and realized I did not know how I had ended up there, I thought the question was rather irrelevant. He went ahead and asked several other questions which one would think were rather obvious. I however gave answers that would please him but the truth of the matter was that I had had sex several times when drunk. I would also not confide to a damn soul if I turned out positive and my life would come tumbling down if the results were anything other than what I expected.

Having convinced him that I was ready for the test and the results afterwards, he reached out for the test kit. He drew my blood and placed a drop on the Elisa testing kit. He added a drop of the wash reagent and placed the kit on the table. The waiting was torture. He engaged me in general talk and I also took in his office just to get my mind off the test for a while. I could not help noticing that the points where the head rested on the sofa were all covered with sweat and dirt; a perfect indication of the hard time people went through in that office.

After fifteen minutes or so, without even a warning, he dropped the question that I dreaded most. Did I know how to read the results? Of course I knew how to read the results. How could I not know how to read the results? Fear was building up inside me.

“Are you ready for the results?”

‘Oh God! I’m going to explode in the next one minute if I don’t assuage my curiosity right now’ before I could answer, he added

“Remember what we said about the results. Whether positive or negative, they should be taken with a positive attitude.” Was he preparing me routinely for the worst case scenario or did he know something I didn’t?

“You can now check.”

With those words, my system shut down. Everything became quiet. This time my heart did not skip some beats. It stopped. A big lump got stuck on my throat and was threatening to choke me. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, nose and below the nose. I could feel a whole river of sweat trickling down my spine. The confidence I had exuded earlier of just coming to confirm my negative status melted away. This was the moment of truth. A matter of life and death.

What I saw sealed the last nail on my miserable coffin of fear. Two red lines distinctly appeared on the test kit. My knees became supple. The lump on my throat was now chocking me. My vision blurred out and I was about to pass out when I barely managed to sit on the edge of my seat. Masha was trying to say something which I could hardly comprehend.

I don’t know for how long I had been out of my body but when I came back to, the buttons on my shirt were undone and the beautiful secretary was trying to air me. It took less than a second for the truth to hit home. I had tested positive. I had Aids. I was a victim. I was going to join that dreaded list of statistics.

How again was I going to face the world? What would my friends think of me? I started seeing women from my mother’s church surrounding my bed holding bibles. I could see a bed pan by my bed. I could see myself in bed feeling lonely because I had no friends left. Did I have a future to look forward to? Surely, only a fool would dream of one.

“We must do a confirmatory test,” Said Macha, “the Elisa test is not absolutely error proof.”

‘Great’ I thought, ‘was that supposed to make me feel better or what?’

Nonetheless, it was the first welcome news I was getting since receiving my roadmap to death. Maybe the bloody Elisa had been faulty after all. My ‘I’m sure I’m negative because’ check list ran in my thoughts. I wasn’t coughing, I wasn’t thin, I didn’t experience pain when passing urine and I didn’t have rashes on my body. The bloody Elisa had to be faulty. With that positive thought, my system started picking up and returning to normal. God knew it would not withstand another surprise. If it ever shut down again, it would have to be for good.

When the Abbott Determine Assays agreed with its sister Elisa, I thought enough was enough. I became hysterical and vetted my anger on Masha. Why were they conducting the test with faulty kits? And was he crazy? Did dudes with Aids look like me from whichever angle? I did not care to listen to his attempt of explaining that Aids and HIV were two completely different situations. And why should I? All I knew was that both were death certificates and it mattered less whether one was signed by the president and the other by the chief. And would I mind sitting and getting more counseling on how to live positively? Like hell I would. Who in devil’s second name was he to tell me about life while I was on death’s highway? Did he expect me to sit through the crap about eating well, exercising and taking medication regularly? The birds would have given him a better audience for all I cared.

I stormed out of his office, walked past the lobby, down the stairs and in the streets. My mind was now occupied by one issue. I was looking for a way to die. I jumped into the road all of a sudden and a matatu screeched violently into a halt. The driver started shouting some not so kind words but who was listening? I wasn’t. They knocked down innocent school kids on a daily basis but when a brother was in need of death support, the brakes miraculously worked perfectly. Whatever happened to the law of fairness? That having failed, I decided to make use of the totally successful law of gravity. I pushed my way into a Bima Towers lift and pressed the sixteenth floor button. I used the stairs from that floor to get to the very top and luckily, the door leading to the roof was open. For a whole minute, I stood there and took in the beauty of Mombasa. It was amazing how everything looks beautiful and peaceful from a higher perspective. The people down at the G.P.O seemed to be in a world of their own miles away. In the distance, the twelve giant tanks of Kenya Oil Refineries stood obstructively. The city was a harmonic balance of old and new buildings. One could clearly make out how the ocean trapped the vast island.

The thought of leaping to my death frightened me. I had never made headlines in my life and I was not about to start doing it in death. I knew that every bone in my body would go its separate way upon landing and my skull would be crushed to a pulp. Before my soul even knocked on hell’s gate, hordes of idlers would be gathered around me with each seeing an opportunity for a minute of fame. They would all come up with fabricated versions of why I had leaped to my death. Media crews would flood the place and start sending the story to their newsrooms in no time. My family and friends would recognize that faceless corpse drenched in its own blood. No I had lived such a glorious life to die such an ignominious death. I went down the stairs of Bima towers in thought. There were over six million ways to die. Surely, there was a descent one out there for me. Jumping down from a skyscraper was such a loud statement. Muhadhara to use my clique’s term.

I couldn’t help wondering why death had courted me. There were six billion souls to choose from and going by the suffering being experience around the world, half this number wouldn’t have minded death. But death was such an inconsiderate bastard. It always chose to nip the bud when most tender. I found it quite unacceptable for the probability to have fallen on me. I would not pretend to have led a moral life but again my indulgences could be termed as amateurish compared to what some people did and still got away unscathed.

Sanity was returning to me in doses as I went down the stairs. I decided to shelve the suicide thought till I was sure beyond doubt that my days were numbered. I walked to the Coast Provincial General Hospital and went to their VCT centre. The ritual there was more or less the same but when it came to the results, I was crossing my fingers for a miracle. I had even managed a little bargain with God promising Him that I would witness to anyone who cared to listen of the miracle that I had received. Well He never kept His part of the bargain.

POSITIVE! Came the rude verdict. I immediately stormed out of the room oblivious of what the counselor was trying to tell me back there. I walked hurriedly out of the building with my head down. I was afraid people could read my status from my eyes. I walked towards the bus stop. A few meters from the hospital’s gate, I came face to face with the last facility I would have wanted to see. The sight of the mortuary sent a shiver all over my body. Many were the times I had plied the route and barely noticed the place. The building now looked imposing and intimidating as weird thoughts occupied my mind. I could see myself in there bundled up with other bodies on the floor waiting for a freezer to become empty. I literally felt cold when I imagined myself in the freezer. I almost threw up when I visualized my lifeless skeleton being tossed about in such a crude way. There was neither honour nor dignity in death.

Down the road, death stared me in the eyes again. They lay there on display. Cheaply made in death defying colours. The inside layered in blue cushion as if the user would have given a damn about comfort. They came in all colours and sizes but the shape was generally rectangular. The West African style of customizing them to suite the user’s occupation in life had not cropped in. I wondered how mine would have looked like now that I was dying without an occupation. May be it would have been in the shape of a pen because I had spent my entire life in class only to end it before I had enjoyed the fruits of my labour. Or maybe it would have been made to resemble my beloved Nokia handset. Devil knew how much credit I had used making calls to my numerous girlfriends. As I reached the bus stop, I couldn’t believe I was the one already shopping for my death paraphernalia. What next? I was going to find me a nice Sir Henry’s suit and some Gucci shoes with a Dolce and Gabana wrist watch to match? God! I was not only losing my physical wellbeing but also turning nuts? This was too much for me by any standards.

I boarded a Likoni ferry bound matatu for home. I was not going to loose it that easily. I still clung to that little hope that seems to lean more towards miracle than reality. How could I be positive? There was not a single sign in and on my body to suggest so. Or was there? I did notice that passengers boarding the matatu avoided sitting next to me at the back. Was it showing already? I pulled at my texturized hair and it remained intact. Whatever that was selling me out wasn’t up there on my head.

As I walked down towards the waiting pew at the ferry, my thoughts still lingered on why me. I had expected this God of omnipotence to be good in economy. He had a whole pool of prostitutes, lepers, thieves, old destitute and multitudes of ne’er do wells to choose from but what does he do? He goes for a successful good looking young campus student who had the prospect of a bright future ahead of him. I was of more economic value to this world than this blind beggar who sat everyday at the ferry begging. And what about this lunatic lady who had made a section of the waiting area her home? She would have cared less with or without Aids. After all, she was crazy.

The preacher at the ferry did not make things any easier for me either. If this had been a banana republic ruled by anarchy, I would have grabbed a gun from my pocket and sprayed a full magazine into his chest. Way before I had corroded my mind with the death sentence, I had never liked the guy. He was always there in oversized trousers and nylon shirts. The trousers were tied way up below the armpits making him look like a clown. The bible that was never read was always tucked beneath the left armpit. He spoke in a guttural voice that was made worse by a huge metallic funnel that improvised as a loud speaker. His themes were ever blasphemous as he was always talking about God having the most beautiful girls, the most pimped ride and something about God being the hottest MC. The stuff from which crazy is made for sure. Occasionally he would break into a rap that would constitute even more blaspheme. Ferry in ferry out, the man stood there on top of a stool reminding all and sundry how they had reinvented Sodom and Gomorrah. At the end of it all, he would ask of them to support the wonderful ministry by giving generously to the offertory bag he held as people proceeded to the ferry.

His topics were general enough so that there was always someone among the passengers identifying with the message. I had on several occasions thought that the man was seeing through my soul until I realized that whatever he chose was common practise. On the day in question, he chose to speak about the wages of promiscuity. He told those who were engaging in sex haphazardly to desist from the habit for their days were numbered. They were going to die from incurable diseases unknown to man. He went ahead and told off all the youths in the gathering that they were dying even before they left a copy of themselves in the world. I was an arm stretch away from where he stood. Who was he and what did he want from me? Did he expect me to fall at his feet, soak them in my tears then wipe them dry and smear a litre of oil from an alabaster jar on him? When the gates were opened and people started trickling into the ferry, I couldn’t believe that some people still went ahead and gave money to the freak.

I made for the upper deck and leaned on a rail. I looked down into the water and a thought came up. Why not take a dive and let the ferry’s rotor finish the job? I was actually envisioning myself climbing the guard rail and taking a leap when I felt a hand grip my shoulder.

“Hi Andy”

I made a violent turn and my acquaintance became puzzled.

“Wo zup” she added “you look like someone who could use some help.”

‘Girls;’ I cursed, ‘they knew everything.’

And how could she not know? Kimberley was more than a friend to me and our relationship went way back to our childhood days. She was the most beautiful girl in our estate and a cause of many fights among hot blooded studs. We had grown up together and had been good friends long before we learnt how to wipe our own bums. I had watched her transform from a skinny shy girl into a ‘drop dead gorgeous’ model like teenager. We had attended the same kindergarten, primary school, sat on the same desk and even played ‘cha baba na mama’ together. When her features had started to take a defined shape and my blood started picking up temperature, I had asked her to be my girlfriend. To my horror, she answered me with the time defying line used by most girls you grow up with. According to her, I was special, I was like a brother, I was her best friend and there was no way we could be involved romantically. When you are a jamaa making a move on some supuu chick, you’d be a fool to give up on the first rejection. I had thought then that she was just playing hard to get. After all, she was superstitiously beautiful. I was later to realize that she had meant every word and as hurting as it was, I had respected her viewpoint. Come to think of it, I am glad it had turned out that way because she was the last person I would have wanted to heart break. What with all those hit and run episodes we had in campus and now this.

“Hi Kim” I said coyly. The thought of the prettiest girl I knew witnessing my suicide sent an electric wave through my nerves.

“Are you sick or something?”

Great! ”Nothing serious really, just a mild headache.” I replied and tried to change the subject. I asked her how UoN was. It was the first time we were meeting since she came home on recess. She answered it was still the same old place with dudes still holding to the idea that girls were created to make them happy, lecturers labouring like donkeys in private colleges while only making ceremonial appearances for campus lectures and everyone else trying his or her level best to help the illicit brew industry put KBL out of business. Gosh! Was she glad to have some time off to regain her strength. And how about me? How had my semester turned out?

‘Well, I went digging randomly and look what I’ve brought home with me: AIDS’ I wanted to shout. I instead gave her a fabricated story of how I had a great time in campus. I occupied the entire crossing with my tales in campus and continued with the same till we took a matatu to our estate. No sooner had we taken our seats than the Longombas hit the airwaves with ‘vuta pumz’ and I was like damn! They catch you in testing rooms, makeshift pulpits and even the airwaves. An ordinary citizen would not have had a problem with vuta pumz but after what had transpired during the day, I was no longer an ordinary Kenyan. I felt like abandoning the matatu but there was no way I was going to convince Kimberley. She had personally chosen the matatu and by the look on her face, she was really enjoying the lyrics. I instead rested my anger on the twins. Why couldn’t they just stick to gibberish kapuka like everyone else?

That night, no sleep came my way. All I could think about was my situation. There was still no sequence of events from my campus indulgences that put me at risk. At least not any that I had been willing to admit to myself as of then. Almost all my sexual acts had been committed while drank. Two or three times I had woken up in some girl’s room without a clue as to how I had ended in there or even what had transpired between us that night. But again, didn’t we need a driver to start and manoeuvre a vehicle? I was also careful when choosing who to sleep with and I knew my girlfriends quite well. I had engaged in a one night stand once and had sworn never to do it again. Although I had friends who visited whore houses every time we went clubbing, I had never slept with commercial sex workers. I considered myself a moderate compared to what my friends did with their dangles and here I was, paying the price of being lukewarm.

I reached for my diary to record the saddest event in my life and that’s when the date struck me. It was Friday the thirteenth. The most evil date of all. What was I thinking going to such a life threatening appointment on such a date? No wonder the results came back the way they did. This date was known to bring misfortune and even death. Witches and sorcerers have themselves a field day on this date. Scary movies have been made based on this date and hotels have skipped the number thirteen to ensure the room is not rejected by guests. What in the world was I thinking going to such an appointment on a Friday the thirteenth? Forgetting the diary entry, I went to sleep with a promise to go for more tests the following day. I slept hungry that night having sneaked into my room trough the back door to avoid meeting any of my family members. The idea that all this could have been a mistake gave me peace that had escaped me all day long. Was I a drowning man clinging to a straw? Was there any truth in the evil surrounding this date or was it just another creation of mythology? There was only one way to find out.

I tested positive not in one or two but three centres that I visited the following morning. I was still under the spell of Friday the thirteenth. What next? Could I confide in my best friend? How would my parents react to such news? I was totally confused and only a super counsellor could get me out of the limbo. It was in this state of perplexity that I remembered her.

She had talked me through numerous teenage difficulties I had experienced in high school. At first it had been difficult for me to lay myself bare but by and by, she had won my confidence and not only became my mentor but also a friend. When after four years I had packed and ready to leave, I had been confident that she had equipped me with what it would take to face the twenty first century. She had been proud of me so far but this was about to change with my next phone call. I was engulfed in shame as I took out my cell phone and dialled her number.

After the usual niceties, I broke down in tears.

“I have Aids” I said in-between sobs.

“What?” Came the reply from the other end.

“Andrew, are you ok?” she asked.

“No. I am not ok. I have been suicidal since I got the news.”

“Hang in there. You know better than taking your life Andrew. Where are you?”

“I’m at home.”

“I’m taking the next flight to Mombasa. Where can I meet you?”

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Hey Andrew, thanks for letting me in on your situation. See you in a few hours.” She added before hanging up.

That was Mrs. Makaria for you. Ready to leave all she was doing and fly five hundred kilometers to listen to my problems. I had put to waste all her years of molding in high school. I met her at the airport at two in the afternoon and we took a taxi back to town. She asked the driver to take us to a quiet coffee shop by the shore lines of the Indian Ocean. She was not foreign to the coastal city as characterized by the way she was greeted at the café.

“They make the best cappuccino in this town.” She told me as we made ourselves comfortable at a secluded table overlooking the ocean. A waitress then approached the table with a receipt book in hand.

“Mrs. Makaria! How’ve you been?” she asked in a jovial mood and went ahead to hug her. She then stretched her hand and greeted me.

“I’m ok. How about you?”

“I’m doing fine. Welcome to Mombasa. Umepotea sana.”

“kazi nyingi Maureen. And how is my little angel doing?”

“Oh she’s doing super fine. She now walks around the house with the aid of anything she finds and last weekend, she uttered her first coherent word. She said mama. Can you believe it? I’m so excited.” And excited she was. Her face was a painting of joy as she went about her angel’s progress in life. She must have been dying inside to tell it to someone. All along the lively conversation, I pretended to study the menu. Existence was such a puzzle. The breath in which life was being discussed was the same breath death would be discussed. There was a very thin line between the two. Maureen took our orders and left. It was evident to me that theirs was not a waitress-customer relationship. I would learn later that Mrs. Makaria had helped her out sometime back when she had a problem and they had become close since then. The good counselor would not disclose to me the nature of the problem. I however became a frequent patron at the café and Maureen and I became good friends. She is the one who disclosed to me that Mrs. Makaria had talked her out of abortion when the father of her unborn child had denied it and fled to the rural area. They hadn’t known each other then. She was just a regular customer at the café who had noticed a troubled waitress and decided to engage her. It wasn’t long before she won the trust of Maureen and the eventuality of a week long rounds of counseling was a little angel named Daisy. The young man was also brought back to his senses and they are now a happily married couple. It was a modern case of a fairytale with Mrs. Makaria taking the role of a fairy godmother. I wished my tale could have a fairy ending too.

She excused herself to take a call as the cups of coffee and plates of cake were being placed on the table. I took the opportunity to take in the ambience. Down below the reef, the ocean waters were coming back home after a day out in the deeps. In the far distance white waves were forming and pushing their way to the shore. Swahili boys were taking an afternoon swim as others flew kites along the shores. Occasionally, a couple would walk along the sandy beach hand in hand and disappear out of view. ‘They had better be careful’ I thought. A ship in the horizons echoed my sentiments with a hoot. I returned my focus back into the café as madam came back to her seat. The place was quite empty with only a few tourists sitting around three tables. A man dressed in a black suit was holding an animated conversation with another one similarly dressed some five tables away from us. Air conditioning kept the place cool in contrast with the outside heat that was threatening to cross over to forty degrees. The interior design of the place was superb. It was a marriage between the traditional coastal and western architectures.

“Ever been to this place?” she asked as she took her seat.

“It’s my first time. I have never heard of it.”

“I always come for their coffee whenever I’m in Mombasa. Take your coffee Andrew. We have a dozen cups to consume.” With that, she placed her hands on the table and sighed.

“Now,” she said “I’m all ears.”

It wasn’t going to be easy but I was going to try and be as honest and truthful with her as it was humanly possible. I spoke for almost thirty minutes before she said anything. I recounted my lifestyle in campus, my reasons for taking the test and all that went on inside my head as I walked from one testing centre to another hoping beyond hope that one of them would declare me negative. Somewhere along the narration, I had started sobbing and she never made an attempt to calm me down. It was part of the therapy. I even managed a laugh in between sobs when I related how I had bargained with God to change my status. At the end of my recount, I felt much at peace with myself. Some muzzled voice was trying to tell me that it was going to be alright. That I could reclaim my life from the fangs of death. I trusted this voice.

“Leaving religion out of this,” she started after getting my account, “philosophy has it that the final destination of every man is death. Like the beginning of life, we have no control over it and it comes at its own discretion. Some are lucky to see it coming while others don’t realize what hit them.”

“Great! Just exactly what I needed to hear. And to imagine she had to fly hundreds of miles to deliver it to my face.” I thought as she went about the philosophy of death. I guess I was just being harsh on everybody. Maybe what I really needed was someone to tell me that the test kit consignment in circulation was faulty. Acceptance was going to take a long time before it could finally set in.

“The first step you ought to take in this situation is acceptance Andrew. Accept that you are going to live with this condition for the rest of your life. The second step is to equip yourself with all the knowledge there is on how to take care of yourself. You could start for instance with differentiating between HIV and Aids. These are completely two different conditions which occur at different stages.” She paused and asked Maureen to bring more coffee.

“The duration of transition from HIV to Aids has now been greatly prolonged such that it may take years or even decades before one becomes an Aids patient. This however incorporates several factors among them good dieting, physical exercising, medication and proper sexual practices. In the past, people who were diagnosed with HIV were known to want to spread it. In the process, they ended up increasing their viral load from others with the condition. How long you live Andrew is up to you. You can live a full life with as minimal complications as possible. You can have a normal life including a wife and kids if you follow expert advice to the letter.”

“But who will agree to marry me in my state?” I interjected.

“All I can tell you for now is that love works in mysterious ways my boy. There is someone for everyone out there. All you need is patience and a big heart.”

“And about the kids, why would anyone want to have infected kids?”

“The children need not be infected Andrew. The risk is quite high alright but if the proper procedure is followed, you can have healthy children.”

“I don’t know. All that sounds quite encouraging to me but to think of all that discrimination, people feeling sorry for me, being sick now and then, living in uncertainty, I mean it’s too much mwalim’. ”

“The world has changed a lot Andrew and peoples’ mentality has also changed with it. Stigmatization today compared to a decade ago has gone down tremendously. Infact, counselors are now having to deal more with the effects of self stigmatization. Right now you may not appreciate fully all that I’m saying but with time it will sink in. You are still in a state of shock and denial and that’s what we should work on first.”

“Shattered…” I thought but actually said it out loud.

“Excuse you?”

“All my dreams are now shattered. I thought I would complete campus, graduate at the top of my class, get a nice job and live the American dream right here in Kenya one day.” I said, “as much as I may want to believe otherwise, all this has slipped away now. The notion of death will ever be at the fore of my head no matter what I choose to believe. I will never live a normal life till the day I die.”

“The mind is everything Andrew. What you believe, you become. You may or may not achieve your dreams, it’s your call. You may or may not live a normal life, it’s your call but remember this one thing. In all this, one thing will always override everything else you are told; what you believe. Your mind can eat up all that muscle in a week if you told it to. Your mind can put you at the top of your class on graduation day if you told it to. Your mind can turn you crazy in a day if you asked of it. The mind is everything Andrew: it’s what you believe. ”

She always knew what to say. She always knew how to press the right buttons. It’s what you believe. The words echoed in my mind. What did I believe? What was there to believe anyway for a twenty year old who a few days ago had the promise of a bright future before him? What was there to believe for a young man who had never stopped to think of an alternative plan incase things did not turn out the way they were supposed to? It was going to take some time before I could believe in myself again. It was going to be a while before the dark clouds of death cleared from my sight.

Several months passed and Mrs. Makaria continued counseling me via e-mail and phone. She called me several times every week and sent me numerous materials on HIV and Aids. I was slowly becoming an expert on the subject. I joined youth groups and shared my knowledge with young people. I continued with my studies and I am on the way to graduating at the top of my class. Until last week, only Mrs. Makaria and I knew of my status. My world shattered again when I broke the news to my parents last week. For ten minutes, my mum fainted and for a moment I thought we had lost her. My dad cried in a way I had never seen a man do before. When my mother came back to, she was uncontrollable. I had underestimated the extent to which they would be hurt. I had underestimated the love of a parent to a dying child. The pain of knowing your kid might die anytime and there is nothing you can do about it. Had it not been for Mrs. Makaria’s frantic effort to return calm and console them, I believe my parents too would have turned suicidal. How would they face their friends? How would they cope with my demise at such a tender age? My biggest worry was my siblings who had all along looked upon me as a role model. I had failed them big time. Eventuality did however sink in and my parents accepted it for the sake of my therapy. There was no denying it however; we were at the nadir of existence. It was amazing grace that we pulled through. I purposed there henceforth to be better than my contemporaries. It was going to take me double the effort and a will the size of an elephant but I would compensate for my let down.

Today I stand before you as one who has gone full circle. I stand before you as a man who has purposed to fight stigma and save as many soul as I can from making the same mistakes. I stand before you in the ranks of Moses and Isaiah. I stand to warn you with a message that university students don’t enjoy diplomatic immunity from the scourge. In a few years time, most of you will be making their debut in campus and other colleges. You will be initiated into the culture of total freedom but learn this one thing; you will account for all that you did within the perimeters of your institution. The accounting may come soon but it may also choose to catch up with you later. This is the truth lovely ones. You may choose to believe otherwise but I implore you to embrace the truth. Those who embrace the truth have in their possession the strongest armour of all time. Truth cannot be mutated. Truth can withstand the crudest of torture. Weep not for me. The only consolation I can accept from you is a promise to live a responsible life. My life is back on track. I have embraced the truth and as long as I keep on believing; I will survive.’

With that, the auditorium went wild. The standing ovation lasted a whole minute and Mrs. Makaria had a Herculean task trying to restore order. She had now been principal for two years and I couldn’t help thinking how lucky those girls were. It had been my idea to go public at her school first. High school students deserved to know the kind of world that awaited them in campus. They would be moving from a constrained environment to total freedom. They needed to know that freedom without responsibility was detrimental. The girls had wept uncontrollably in-between my speech. They were well warned. Whether it would stick with them for a day, a week, an year or a life time, only time would tell. Mrs. Makaria thanked me vehemently for my courage and strength. I owed it all to her. It was the least I could do.

(Nb: this is purely the work of creativity. The events herein narrated are all fictional and do not in anyway reflect the life of the author or anyone known to him. It can however happen to anyone and students in high schools and institutions of higher learning are especially warned. Don’ say you wasn’t told. ©Mmg.)

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