A group of women is on tour to the maternity ward of a
hospital in town. They are in a jovial
mood with their gifts to the new mothers, and are happy to see new lives
brought into the world. As they want to
leave, they also have a gift waiting for them – an offer to take a voluntary
HIV test. Their leader is the first to
volunteer. As she comes out of the room,
she has a smile on her face. A smile of
hope, a smile of faith and a smile of courage.
Salome Patson Mbonani is HIV positive.
“When the nurses at the Igawilo hospital offered us to
take a voluntary test back then in March 2000, I was the first one to volunteer
because I really wanted to know my status.
I was in a polygamous marriage of four wives and my husband was already
very sick. I just had to take the
test. And when it was confirmed that I
was HIV positive, I was not sad. I knew
that I needed to be strong for everyone so that I could survive,” she explains.
Salome was the chairperson of the ruling party’s women’s
wing in Itezi ward, Mbeya Urban in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, and she
and other ten women who were councilors had visited the hospital as part of
their charity work. Two refused to get
tested. When Salome reached home she
treated her husband nicely and later told her about the hospital visit.
“He was shocked because he already knew that he was HIV
positive since he had already tested secretly, so he thought that maybe I would
get angry or even leave him. But when he
saw my reaction, he too had hope,” she narrates. After that they went to the hospital
together, and she took care of him until he passed away.
Two of his four wives also passed away since they refused
to get tested. “They actually used to
laugh and insult me, saying that I was the one with the virus. In the end they got so sick and it was
revealed to them that they were HIV positive during their final days. The first wife and I are the ones on ARVs and
we are all fine,” she says.
Salome is now a happy woman taking care of herself. Her realization of the virus and the
education that she has received has made her now a peer educator at KIHUMBE,
through its Prevention program that is funded by the American people through
the Walter Reed Department of Defense (DoD).
Through her job as a peer educator, Salome is so keen to
make sure that everyone knows about the HIV virus and how to protect themselves
from being infected. And one of the
things she insists on, is for people to stop believing in cultures and norms
that could get them easily infected, just like her.
“My husband’s brother passed away from what we suspected
to be HIV, and my husband inherited the wife.
She was the fourth wife. All of
us were so angry with him and we asked if he wanted to kill all of us, because
we were sure that the new wife might have been infected as well, but our
husband ended up beating us and telling us to shut up,” she explains. “If it were not for that cultural practice,
maybe we would have not been infected.”
Salome actually nearly faced the same fate after her
husband passed away and his relatives wanted to remarry her. “I told them that I would kill them with the
virus that I had. They didn’t want to
listen so I ran away and went to live with my mother. I am now happy there with my three children,”
she says.
Salome is very thankful for her children who are taking
good care of her. They are 28, 26 and 22
years old, and have been very good examples by also taking a voluntary test and
protecting themselves after testing negative.
And she always promises them that she has no plans of dying early. She is happy with her life, and she is happy
that she could help others as well.
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