Meet Jane who says you can live “a normal life” when HIV positive

It’s quite surprising but women with whom I work here, really love to be recorded. Almost each day they ask me when I am going to visit their homes and make a video. This makes my life as a blogger relatively easy. I remember my days in Maersk when I introduced video as a communication tool. It was pretty tough to get people in front of the camera. Many of us are shy to get recorded and don’t like that feeling of looking at yourself on screen afterwards. I am one of them too.. 😊

As you might already noticed, my videos with Josephine and Sumin followed a similar structure. I visit the house, ladies introduce themselves and show how they live. They have put lots of effort to express themselves in English, aiming to make a good impression on you, the viewer. So we have aligned a similar structure with Jane too, but this time I got quite a surprise. I didn’t know she would be so open about her health condition of being HIV positive.

After the recording we continued our discussion. Jane told me she is not ashamed of her health condition and everyone in the village knows it. Jane is also attending meetings organized by TASO where she talks about her daily life to inspire others to not be afraid of HIV.

“During my husband’s funeral, I thought I will be in the coffin soon too. I was so afraid what would happen to me.” Now Jane is smiling, she says that you can live a (relative) normal life, as long as you take the prescribed medicine. It’s great that TASO provides the medicine for free, as many women living in rural Uganda would otherwise struggle to afford it.

“I feel so powerful! You need to see me in the garden. I am a strong woman, nobody would be able to tell I’m HIV positive.” Jane is not ashamed of her condition at all and was proud to record this video. “Why should I?” There are 1.3 million people HIV infected in Uganda. We need to talk about it, share our stories and work together!

I am very proud of our talented and strong tailor Jane who always greets me with a smile and positive energy. It’s great we have such inspirational women in the world who are not afraid to speak up. I believe telling personal stories, increasing awareness and supporting each other is a great way to make the world a better place to live in! Together we can always achieve more.

Originally published at nainyte.com.