Educating the Educated

What would you do if you are being called an assassin, simply because you are sharing information? Here is what happened to me when I shared important information on PrEP to a seemingly well educated person...

I am sure many of my fellow Burundians are not well updated about HIV. So this week I decided to share the latest on PrEP as a pill you can take to protect you from being infected from HIV. When you are HIV negative of course. I wanted to communicate in Kirundi so that people who don’t speak English or not so good French could understand what PrEP is all about. So I posted the PrEP information in Kirundi and asked the leaders, if they learned something new, to share the post so that their friends can learn as well.

Somebody shared it on her timeline with a Belgian man with a medical background, working in Bujumbura. He demanded to explain or give a short summary what I am talking about in French. I saw we had one friend in common that is why he could see. I did not want to mix languages in this post and I wanted to keep conversations in Kirundi with Burundians. So I went through the inbox via messenger and explained that I am sharing the information about PrEP, a pill that can prevent from being infected from HIV virus. He went to look at my Facebook profile and he sent me this message” VU,VOTRE DIPLOME.JE VOIS QUE VOUS N’AVEZ AUCUNE COMPETENCE MEDICALE, SACHEZ QU’EN FAISANT CROIRE QU’IL YA DES PILULES QUI PREVIENNENT L’APPARITION DU VIH. VOUS SEREZ RESPONSABLE DE L’INFECTION ET LA MORT DES PERSONNES QUI FONT CONFIANCE. EN PARTAGEANT VOTRE IGNORANCE CRASSE, ET GAGNER DE L’ARGENT SUR CETTE ESCROQUERIE INTELLECTUELLE, EST LAMANTABLE! BON WEEKEND.”

I immediately shared with him some website that have information on PrEP, for example readily available info on CDC, SOAIDS. He did not recognize those, and instead he went further by insulting me, “ Cette escroquerie est indigne. Aucun medicament ne protege le VIH ...Vas-y. Fais ton petit business mortel. En bonne conscience. Se faire traiter d’ignorant par une petite idiote, est plutot un compliment... merci .Assassin!”

When he called me an idiot as a compliment, and an assassin, he was expecting me to just give up and look away?! I promised myself when I came out of the closet about my HIV status to never be afraid to speak out. To be a forgiving person when I meet this kind of people who think they know more and think they are highly educated and want to put me down because they believe they are better than me?

I went straight to the point and showed him that I knew what I was talking about. I gave many reasons why it is important to educate people on PrEP, not only Burundians in Burundi, but everywhere in the World. To double check if he is aware of all information, since he claimed to know about HIV. So when I asked him if he knew about U=U, he simply ignored the question and was not able to answer this correctly. So here is a man that does not know the facts about PrEP or U=U and calling me an assassin and idiot.

I decided to forgive him as I saw an arrogant man with low self-esteem and who did not want to bother to read up on the facts. I guess it was difficult for him to imagine a woman without a medical background to be smarter than him. Well, mister, my education level is good enough to study and understand live-saving information and share this with my community.
I will never give up because those kind people. What I will continue to do, is educating them, show them the way  to communicate. If you are an educated person and you see somebody sharing wrong information, the first thing you do is correcting that person. NOT INSULTING. In this way you can show the World that you are better educated!

This showed me how much stigma and ignorance there still is in this World, even amongst well educated people. They will melt down the moment we stand up against bullies and promote  U=U, PrEP as tool to fight stigma and discrimination.

I live to Empower, Inspire and Educate.

Peace ,
Eliane