He sits next to you on a row of hard plastic chairs. You are irritated that of all the places he could have sat down on, he chose to sit next to you. You consider moving away but just can’t be bothered to. And you don’t want to be rude.
He says something then. In a soft, broken voice. Or rather, a fragment of what was once a voice; full and heavy. You don’t hear him because you aren’t listening. But you look at him. And he says it again. “I have AIDS.”
A voice in your head screams, ‘ඒඩ්ස් මාරාන්තිකයි!’ It’s deadly. It’s death. It’s the devil himself.
What do you do now? You consider your options.
Option 1: You walk away immediately. You get to a bathroom as soon as possible and scrub yourself clean.
Option 2: You continue sitting there or in the same room as this sick man. You run the risk of catching what he has.
But then you see a poster with facts about HIV/AIDS. You read that you won’t get HIV/AIDS by sitting next to someone with the virus. You read that mere physical contact won’t suffice either. You read that HIV/AIDS is not a ‘gay disease’ and that it’s not something you get when you have too many sex partners.
www.unaids.org
You look at the man again. Now you have another option. You can talk to him. Be a friend. Prove to him that the world isn’t as cruel as one would think.
Recently, a boy was excluded from school because people thought he had AIDS. The school emptied. No one wanted to be around him. And Twitter saw a few tweets about the incident. Of course, the cricket matches going on got more attention but people did tweet about the incident. And they tweeted about the need for sex education and awareness. But that’s all they’ll probably do.
Photo Courtesy : Bbc.com Read full story at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35684441
UNAIDS Sri Lanka, and especially the country manager, Dr Dayanath Ranatunga, has done quite a bit to establish what’s a fact and what’s a myth when it comes to HIV/AIDS. I participated in two media workshops and both taught me a lot. We heard stories from people with HIV/AIDS, homosexuals, sex workers and transsexuals. We were told about the laws in Sri Lanka. And most importantly, we were told about how we should report about HIV/AIDS and sex workers.
I remember being told that the sex worker who spoke to us had a family and had a life. We were to respect her wishes and not mention her name. When writing the article, I remember being careful. The other journalist who I wrote the article with was also careful.
Later, when going through articles published by other newspapers, we found that the lady’s name had been published. This was after a program of over one hour where we were constantly reminded what a negative impact careless reporting has on people. We were reminded of our responsibility as reporters and journalists. We were told to be responsible and careful.
And we couldn’t do that. I remember reading another article and feeling so angry about the way it was written. The raw truth, ugly or not, was hidden. It was sugar-coated. And what happens then is that we feed society’s false beliefs. We don’t give people enough truth and information to remove stigma that surrounds such topics. We contribute towards stigma and discrimination. We give people a reason to be afraid.
I remember at least two HIV/AIDS awareness programs in school. I remember feeling uneasy at first because wasn’t HIV/AIDS something that homosexuals and people who sleep around get? This was when the chapter on reproduction made us uncomfortable. And here was someone, a stranger, talking to us about HIV/AIDS.
And I remember him talking about the red ribbon and how most of us were wearing red ribbons; it was part of our school uniform. I remember kids making jokes about how wearing a red ribbon meant you had HIV/AIDS. When we left the hall though, we made no such jokes. We were no longer uneasy. And we no longer had a reason to be afraid of HIV/AIDS or think it was a ‘gay disease.’
You see, fear stems from ignorance. We don’t know, so we are afraid. Because we don’t know enough about HIV/AIDS, we are afraid of it. The logical thing would be to learn more about it. But no! Why bother? Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? Hell, even reading too much about HIV/AIDS might make us victims.
With fear comes stigma and discrimination. With fear comes hatred.
Hatred isn’t something that’s easy to get rid of. It’s not easy to not hate someone anymore. Fear too, is difficult to remove from life. Fear is often involuntary. You don’t choose to be afraid. You just are.
But ignorance isn’t. We have a choice when it comes to ignorance. And ignorance isn’t always not knowing enough. It’s also refusing to know more. We are a people who like to say, ‘this isn’t part of our culture.’ We are quick to say, ‘where in our history has this ever happened?’ And okay, blame colonization or westernization for homosexuality or HIV/AIDS or the sex trade. Wallow in your ignorance. But if so, don’t leave the cesspit you choose to live in. Don’t walk around this world and leave traces of shit everywhere. Don’t spread your ignorance, foolishness, fear, anger and hatred.
What saddens me is this; this issue may never go beyond a few tweets and articles. Look at me. I wrote this, I published this and then… my efforts end there. I won’t make plans to organize awareness programs. I mayn’t even write about this topic again. All those tweeps who wrote so much about the need for awareness and sex education, most wouldn’t go beyond those 140 characters. We make an effort. We must admit that much. But we don’t do enough. We use our way with words to talk about issues but we don’t take more steps forwards.
Someday I hope that we can live in a country with zero discrimination and zero ignorance.
Someday I hope we can live in a world with zero discrimination and zero ignorance.
And I hope we can do much more to create such a world.
