Writing Competition: 'The Future is in Our Hands - HIV/AIDS 2009’

At the end of October, AFEW launched a Writing Competition under the title ‘The Future is in Your Hands!’ in order to publicise World AIDS Day (Dec. 1) and encourage some creative, personal responses to the issue of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Altogether, we received over 60 entries representing a variety of literary forms – from poetry and song lyrics to short stories and essays. We thank all participants for the many original, moving, heart-warming and witty works that they sent to us.

Region-by-region, our juries of professional writers and journalists chose the following winners:

Central Asia: ‘Your Future is in Your Hands’, Olga Tulyanova, Tajikistan.

Russian Federation: ‘My Non-Fictional Life’, Maria, Moscow.

Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus: ‘I Am FOR Life’, Nataliia E.S. Kostenko, Kyiv, Ukraine.

From these, AFEW Board Member and award-winning journalist Vladimir Pozner had the task of deciding the overall winning piece and gave the laurels to Nataliia E.S. Kostenko for her essay ‘I Am FOR Life’. 

 

What you resist persists.
Carl Jung

“If we continue to use the same worn-out slogans we are doomed to failure. Huge sums of money, self-sacrifice, titanic efforts by people working in the field – all this will be wasted, if we continue with an approach that we know to be mistaken.

Mother Teresa once said: ‘I will never go to an anti-war meeting, but when you have a pro-peace one, please invite me’. I fully share her view of the world. Today, the fight against AIDS has turned into a war on a global scale. But, I refuse to stand in the ranks of those who fight against anything; I will only take part in a movement for something. I see it as a struggle for the spiritual health of the whole population of Planet Earth. Our victory will be the triumph of moral principles, which, if they are put into practice, will reduce the risk of the spread of HIV to a minimum. To reach this goal, we have to strengthen concepts such as the Family, Fidelity, Healthy Living and the Intrinsic Value of All Life.

Beginning with our day-to-day lives and ending with our movement’s slogans, we have to change the formula, bring positive thoughts to the fore, removing all the ‘don’ts’ and negative stamps. To some people it may seem absurd or even profane to find optimism, while hundreds of thousands of people suffer and die. But, while the search for medicines against continues, let’s all live for: protection of the environment, good standards and accessibility in medical care, clean relations between people and the real values of life. Such values cannot be drowned out in drug-induced oblivion, because they are above the mundane details of everyday life and the desire for approval from your friends by sacrificing yourself to a shared needle. I will be in the first row of this parade. I’ll hold up placards with the words ‘For Tolerance to HIV-Positive People!’, ‘For Access to Treatment’, ‘For LIFE’ and I’ll paint them in the very brightest colours.

As it stands, we already struggle continually with our own weaknesses and the failings in the world around us. You defeat one negative situation and another one just appears. And so the struggle goes on and on forever. We live in a continuous state of resistance, which zaps our inner strength, when all we have to do is to become the change that we expect and even demand of others. Do many of those people who hand out condoms and promote their use for every sexual contact use them in their private lives? Or do they just dismiss the whole thing with the words ‘I can trust my sexual partner’, thus casting doubt on the trust between other couples and risking their own lives?

In my life, I’ve never seen such optimism, as I have seen in people living with HIV. They are not resentful and do not desire revenge for what has happened to them…On the contrary, many find an inner source of strength, a realisation of the preciousness of life, which formerly slept within them. Every day, I see their pain and despair, which break to the surface in tears, when they hear of their HIV-positive status…But from I support them through those early days, because they are fighting for life! They are not resisting AIDS, and their eventual death, because they know that resistance is not the answer. Rather, they are consciously fighting:

FOR each new day,
FOR understanding from others,
FOR a smile from people who are in the same situation,
FOR the opportunity to help others by talking about their stories, their mistakes and making sure that others have the right information before it gets to the stage of diagnosis.

Above all, I am for preventing HIV/AIDS from the very beginning.”

 

Like most people, after leaving school and even after graduating from university, I knew very little about the issue of HIV/AIDS. It was nothing to do with me…Of course, once a year  some people had visited our school, related tedious things in a monotone and left behind postcards and calendars with terrifying slogans like ‘AIDS is Death’, ‘Beware the Needle of the Drug Addict’, etc. But, this was all somewhere out there in the distance and definitely couldn’t apply to me. Well, really it would be hard to imagine someone attacking you in the street, sticking a needle in you, cackling evilly and running off, wouldn’t it?

I lived contentedly wearing these rose-coloured glasses right up until my graduation from university.

But what happened next? Next, I got a job and my extended ‘romance’ with the AIDS services began…My first meeting with a HIV-positive person, first trainings, first post-test consultations, seeing the first tears of a 17-year old girl on hearing her diagnosis…

Six months into my work there this public life merged into my private life.

We met on December 1. I never thought that this date would become such a symbolic one for me!

Laughing eyes, a wide smile…and I fell for him!

I already knew at that point that my chosen one had a distinction – he was positive. HIV-positive. And I already knew then about the existence of discordant couples. This wasn’t the problem. The main problem was that neither of us were free: he lived with his girlfriend, and I was engaged to be married…

I didn’t get married!

We are together! This is the most valuable gift that life could bring to me! This small ‘piece of the epidemic’ that everyone fears is the love of my life!!!

And now, I get many questions from people whose thinking is still on the level of those school postcards and calendars: Aren’t I afraid that I’ll be infected? Do I fear the future? Am I scared that I’ll have a sick child? NO! I am not afraid!

I am a rational person who has all the information. I can make choices for myself. And, really, I’m just in love! I love a person with a + sign…

And maybe, my individual case will not affect society as a whole. Maybe, the story of my life will be met with snide remarks from someone. But I really hope that one day people will stop looking for ever new reasons to victimise one another (gender, nationality, skin colour, diagnosis, income level…and on and on).

The main problem for a person living with HIV is not the positive status itself, but the people who are forever harping on about it – imagining extra implications, blaming, ostracising…

PS. December 1 is coming up soon! Our small anniversary!

 

 

I hear tears in the silence; you’re crying, my dear, in your sleep,
And all that you loved has betrayed you, destroyed you,
But you smother this crying of your soul within 
And calm yourself at the instant of the irrepressible heart’s cry.
He has wronged you; he has wronged your purity.
He begs your forgiveness, kisses your hands, but in vain:
He doesn’t understand you, and he’ll carry on lying,
Saying he’s not for you, there’s a river between you
And he wants to swim to you, but fears the raging river.
He proves you are right to blame him.
But kindness exists on earth and the support of a strong hand.
One day, he’ll feel the betrayal of an agonising loss
And he’ll remember you, and then understand the pain
For which you cry these bitter tears, but you…live, forgive, love…

This poem is dedicated to an 18 year-old girl who came to our social bureau (DINA Social Bureau, Tajikistan) for help in coping psychologically with her situation. She said that she was in love with a young man (her first love). However, one day she and another female friend had fallen in with a drunken group, who raped her. After this terrible experience, she was diagnosed with hepatitis C. Once he found out, her boyfriend left her, despite having formerly sworn eternal love and fidelity to her. The girl made several attempts to take her own life, but thankfully failed. I hope that everything works out for her. She is so young and so beautiful.