Last week was a busy period for me as a participant during the 22nd International AIDS Congress in Amsterdam where 15,000 delegates from all over the world came together.
First there was the pre-conference where I participated in the WomenNow2018 Summit, UequalsU as a community voice . Women are very much left behind. When it comes to U=U towards women and breastfeeding there is no clear answer to this particular issue and we know many women would like to breasfeed. Using my experience of not breastfeeding and my memories of myself being breastfed till late age, I still feel emotional about the times I did not have a chance to breastfeed. If U=U can be applied to our women, it will be a great empowerment for mothers to spread the message easily. U=U is a powerful weapon to end the stigma. For womenNow2018Summit it was about women’s HIV, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Justice. Young women shared their experience with gender abuse, sexual assault and they want to speak out. It has been very long for them to keep silent. Some experience of young women being unable to bear children because their uterus have been removed without consent, a practice still happening in many hospitals in Africa. We learnt to stand together and shout out loud for justice. We marched from the Beurs van Berlage till Amsterdam Centraal station and back singing and making the slogan “Women Now!”.
There were also many activities organized in the Global village next to the conference.To mention a few higlights:
PrEP as a prevention method: Women who use PrEP shared their experience which gave me hope that someday HIV infection is going to end if they would make PrEP available for everyone as a prevention. Talking about the ability to make the change, we learnt that women can do much more when they stand together and stand up and speak out: “ Nothing without Us for Us”. Here I also shared my story and I danced for them African moves and they were all so vibrant and we forgot we have been emotional about so many story! I felt good to bring back their smiles!
Stigma Experience bye Hello Gorgeous: I was part of the team of Stigma Experience. My role was “A guru” which meant I had to free a person from the agony of all the stigma and accusations that make you feel bad about being HIV positive. How did it work? You start by being in the doctor’s office for your test result .The doctor is very unfriendly, wearing gloves before even greeting you, even mentioning that is a precaution. You will hear many thing about what happens in case you are HIV positive. The talking is too long that you become nervous and want to hear your result to go home. Finally you get the result and the doctor asks you to repeat your name and say you are HIV positive. You really feel awful after this consultation. From the doctor’s white room you enter in a pitchdark room with a lot of sound, a beating heart and two persons on both sides of the room telling at you how bad you are for having HIV, blaming, scaring and accusing you. They make sure you leave the room feeling really traumatised and guilty of being HIV positive. Then I open the black door with a smile and you finally see the colourful lights. I welcome you and do a breathing exercise. When you start feeling better I can talk to you, make you smile. And I use my positive story to make you realize ‘life is beautiful, that there is a life after HIV diagnose. Using my talents of dance we close our conversation by doing a small African move with the song ”Nakupenda” which means “I love you”. Then I ask you to share my positive vibes with the World. You are free to go now! I am proud to be part of HIV stigma experience and helped as many as I could to break the stigma and taboo. We saw many different people from many different places, some from the US, Africa, Germany, Italy, Portugal, etc.
AIDS March “Toward Zero Together”: The AIDS March happened on Monday 23rd July in the afternoon when many AIDS conference delegates, HIV activists for all over the World and organisations working to fight HIV and AIDS, marched together to give attention for Ending AIDS, towards Zero stigma, Zero discrimination and Zero Criminalisation, zero barriers to HIV treatment. As Stigma fighter I marched because I believe there are many countries including my own Burundi where people are still dying of AIDS. It was during the hottest moment of the day, but we were no cowards. We marched from Amstelveld to Rai. I marched with many people that play an important role in our community; from Princess Mabel, director Louise from AIDS Funds Netherland , Professor Peter Reis , Bertus Tempert from Dutch HIV Association to Lilian Ploumen. We were the frontrunner of this march. It was great to show our concern and march Toward Zero Together. At the Rai we had a nice dancing session with many activists who cannot speak out in their countries!
What an event!
In my next blog I will tell you something about another event that happened in the same week, namely the positive flame torch relay and event... Stay tuned and speak to you soon.
Peace,
Eliane
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