True Story

6 September 2010

AIDS had always been just a movie to me, to be honest. Something real and something sad, but never inescapable. Something I could always fast-forward or turn off when it was too hard. Something I was always safely removed from. Just watching.
Opiyo Cosmas sat down next to me at Laroo refugee camp. His frame told me he was ten years old, but his stoic face said sixty. This boy had already seen too much.
I started asking him about his life. His favorite subject, his brothers and sisters, what he wants to be when he grows up.
Math.
One older brother, two younger sisters.
Pilot.
Quick answers, never a smile. I stopped asking questions and I waited. Slowly, his deep brown eyes shifted up towards my face, and he held my gaze for a few seconds, and he wrung his hands together.
“My father is HIV positive.”
My heart dropped, and I bit my lip. My head throbbed; I could feel every heart beat in my chest, but still I waited. His eyes shifted down to the dusty ground again, and he watched a line of ants, marching… marching…
Real life was happening, time was moving forward; the ants marched on. I was watching that movie, but this time I was in the movie, and I couldn’t fast forward or turn it off or escape, and neither could Cosmas. The ants kept time, marching to the drum beat of my heart, never missing a step, never looking back, forward… forward…
“My mother died of AIDS four years ago,” still his eyes were downcast. “My father is so weak now, he can’t get out of bed, he can’t care for us, so sometimes my aunt comes to cook.”
“And you? Your sisters? Your brother?” I asked.
“We are fine, except for Mercy, the youngest. She got it from my mother at birth, four years ago.” His eyes turned towards mine again. “She gets the pill, but she is weak, because she doesn’t get proper nutrition. Her body can’t stay healthy.”
Deep breath. Don’t choke. Don’t cry.
Dull, lifeless eyes; burdened shoulders; hurting heart.
I held his hand, and I prayed. What else can you do? When time won’t stop and you can’t pause, and you realize the movie is real life, and people are dying, and you know that something very well could be done, if people took action.

What can we do?