I’m supposed to be a director, but I think I’m a Jane of everything.

I can be a messenger, I can be an instructor, I can be an advocate, I can be a mouthpiece, I can be a shoulder to cry on.

I found out I had AIDS when my daughter started to get sick just after I had given birth to her. The first few months she was progressing well. And then she started to have rashes and mouth thrush.

Without realising that I was making it worse because I didn’t have information, I took her to sangomas, the traditional doctors. 

They scraped and put the black stuff. And that time also my breasts were having sores, we didn’t have information, and I was force-feeding her, not realising that I was putting more of the virus into her, she had all this thrush in the mouth and with all the scratching from the Sangoma, she had so many open wounds inside the mouth, so I think that is what made it worse.

She died at 8 months.

If I divorce, then it means I’m going to look for another partner. And then it means I’m going to infect that partner. Can I live with that? I can’t. It’s better for me to stay in the relationship. The damage has already been done, we must now support each other. We sat down, we talked, we must live together.

I’m just going to live with it. Because I can’t change it.

And I’ve got to live with it and do as best as I can for myself.