Articles About Internews
Issue 104, July/August 2007
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Self portrait by Siv Cheng |
In 1997, I married an immigration policeman stationed at the border port of Sihanoukville, where I grew up, and expected to live happily ever after. I was 20 years old, Cambodia’s seaside resort was thriving on tourism, and the Kingdom’s HIV/AIDS epidemic was a mere five years old and hardly talked about.
Two years later, I gave birth to a baby girl whom the Chinese astrologers said would be clever and successful. She was thus given a name that means “golden cool.” I breastfed her and did not know what caused her diarrhea. So I reverted to bottle-feeding with some unspoken worries about HIV infection.
Meanwhile, my husband fell sick in mid-2000, his condition worsening day to day. The drugs prescribed by both Khmer traditional healers and physicians had no effect. We sold all our belongings – two motorcycles and some jewelry – to pay for treatment but it brought no relief.
My husband was very skinny and coughing all the time. None of the medicine I bought treated him. One day, my mother-in-law confided out loud her fear that her son had HIV/AIDS. I was terrified. Like the majority of Khmers, all I knew about people with HIV/AIDS was that they would die soon. I didn’t even know what to do with a condom. To assuage my mother-in-law’s suspicions, I discreetly had my own blood tested at a nearby state-run hospital.
Although I was braced for the worst, when the day arrived, it was still shocking when the counselor, as gently as possibly, said “you have the AIDS virus.” I cried until all energy and hope drained from my body, and I was empty. Why had destiny punished me so? A traditional Khmer woman, I obeyed my parent’s advice and, a good Buddhist, I always behaved properly and ethically.
My husband persisted in asking about my blood results. “Never mind, we aren’t affected by HIV/AIDS,” I smiled and lied, fearing that depression from knowing the truth would kill him. That night he ate all his dinner for the first time in weeks.
One day when my husband asked for the doctor, he simply refused to come. Having correctly concluded my husband’s symptoms were from HIV/AIDS, he gave up on treatment.
My husband persisted, until one day my mother-in-law blurted out, “He does not come because you have AIDS.”
My mother-in-law would soon give up on her son and banish me and her granddaughter. We were only a burden to her, despite my efforts to support my own family. By then, I had brought my husband to the capital Phnom Penh, where I learned there were increasing services available for Cambodia’s growing AIDS epidemic. I didn’t have time to see the doctor about my own new joint pains. There were many obstacles to overcome, and fears to be left behind, and food to be brought to the table.
When my husband died in January 2001, I moved with my child to live with my mother in Sihanoukville. But after a few days, I couldn’t move with pain throughout my joints and a fever that flared four times a day. At the hospital I was told I had syphilis. I followed the doctor’s orders, but couldn’t get rid of it. I thought I might die, and would never see my daughter again. My neighbors from the village came to visit me as if they were paying their last respects, with apples, oranges and mangosteins.
A month later, a hairdresser told me about a traditional herbal cure for syphilis and explained to my mother how to simmer the herbs. I drank it and the fever disappeared in a day. I drank it for a year and a half and finally recovered.
But things did not get better. My friends and my cousin avoided me. My elder sister came, tore down my room in my mother’s house – the room that was mine since childhood – and claimed sole rights to the family property, even though she already had a house of her own. My life was so isolated. I had nowhere to go. I wanted to commit suicide, but my daughter meant everything to me.
Then one day, the sun made a rare appearance at Preah Sihanouk Hospital, where I was finally going for ARVs. Little by little, it rose higher in the sky and my luck seemed to change. I finally took the plunge and tested my daughter. She was negative. I met an HIV/AIDS instructor who worked for a local group called Vithey Chivit (Road of Life) and persuaded me to work with her – to educate positive urban poor squatters about health care. As I encouraged them to stand up and demand access to medical services, fight discrimination, and get support from the community, I became braver and stronger myself.
In 2004, I met an Australian woman who had remarkably lived with HIV/AIDS for more than 15 years. At her leadership seminar, she brought together 28 women, mostly widows who had many dependents, faced unemployment, and discrimination in the workplace, family and community. Relying only on ourselves for resources, we started the “Women for Hope Club” that became like a new or second family providing emotional support, assistance and income generation. They elected me director with the formidable task of starting the country’s first positive women’s group.
A club member introduced me to the BBC-World Service Trust where I came to realize how powerful the media can be for good when it chooses to be. I wanted people to know who I was; I wanted to show through the media that although we are positive, we can do ‘anything.’ I also wanted to send messages to the decision makers to fulfill their promises to positive people.
I was then accepted as a BBC-World Service Trust volunteer and assigned to their HIV/AIDS radio talk show programs. A few months later, I was selected as a United Nations Volunteer in its Greater Involvement People Living with HIV/AIDS Project. My task was to inspire the local women’s media center to increase its radio broadcasts on HIV/AIDS, particularly giving voice to the problems of positive people.
Later, I became a full-fledged producer, and we created a call-in show, dubbed “Hope,” targeted at discrimination and aiming to show how positive people are an invaluable resource in the fight against AIDS. Yet NGOs and government HIV/AIDS projects in Cambodia were not using them.
Live, on air, positive people spoke out courageously and answered questions boldly. Listeners were hearing the problems of positive people from their own lips. It was the first positive radio show – by, for and about positive people.
When the project ended last year, I was offered a position with an international media development organization, Internews, which was launching a two-year project on HIV/AIDS and the media, and seeking someone who understood the issues.
Our work with journalists varies from formal trainings to helping them find good stories. We create opportunities for journalists, editors and positive people to better communicate. Getting them to increase their coverage of AIDS and find new angles has been a continuing challenge. We endlessly try to address the complex issue of terminology, stigma, accuracy and sensitivity.
I hope more positive people will become journalists, and the relationship between journalists and positive people will intertwine. Our press needs to draw more attention to HIV/AIDS for the sake of its people, especially those who live in the remote areas and are increasingly affected by Cambodia’s AIDS epidemic, now facing the highest prevalence rate in all of Asia. Unlike the 20-year-old girl in Sihanoukville in 1997, I want them to be aware.
Sometimes my dreams do not work. But I hold onto my family and my friends – my mom, my new husband, and my “Golden Cool,” who is now nine years old. I hope that everybody can become like my family.