No looking back – Rani Jayakodi, India

RANI JAYAKODI, aged 25, is an outreach worker for the integrated health and development programme, Seva Nilayam, in Tamil Nadu, India. Rani left school at 15, and had an arranged marriage at 17 years of age.

When my husband first fell ill he went to a private hospital. There, he asked the doctor not to reveal his HIV status to anyone. After that, we used condoms for some time. I thought that this was because he had a sexually transmitted disease: I didn’t know about the HIV.

One day, I was looking through some papers and I found his medical report, which said that he was HIV positive. I confronted him about it, and asked him if that was the reason we were using condoms. He denied this, saying there was no problem with his private parts. Later, I told his parents and they shouted, saying, "What is this, is your wife now a doctor?" There was a huge fight. Then he burned the test results.

Some time after that, his health improved. I began to think, OK, maybe it was not true. After three years of marriage he was very healthy. We no longer used condoms or talked about HIV, although I did have that fear in my mind. By now I had learned quite a lot about AIDS. I kept asking myself, "Why did he destroy the test results?"

After three-and-a-half years I got pregnant and delivered a boy child. He only lived for one month. I did not have an HIV test; there was no reason to. The baby was very underweight, only two-and-a-half kilograms. My husband had beaten me in the ninth month; maybe that is why the baby died.

My husband became sick again. The doctor had told us that he would not survive and that there was no point in taking alternative remedies. But I wanted to try more cures and borrow some money from my parents. My husband said, "Don’t go to your family, you will not come back. I need you beside me." He was aware that he was going to die at any moment.

I convinced him to let me go home. But my family wouldn’t give me any money and they discouraged me from going back. When I got the news that he had passed away I wanted to go immediately, but my mother refused. She threatened me by saying, "If you go I will commit suicide."

Some time before, I had gone with my mother for an HIV test. It was positive. Since then, my family had not allowed me to touch my sister’s children. They said it was better, for the children’s sake. "Don’t touch them if you want them to have a life." I was very hurt by that talk.

By now, everyone had got to know that my husband had died of AIDS. My relatives told me, "You were married to him for five-and-a-half years, you should have been at the funeral." I felt very bad.

There was a place where there were poisonous plants, and one day I went there and collected some seeds in a bag. After two days I began eating them. They were very bitter so I took a spoon of sugar and ate them with that. At one point I fainted and hit my head. My mother found me and called the doctor, who gave me an injection that induced diarrhoea and vomiting.

When my mother saw what a state I was in, she also became ill. She started bleeding and I took her to Arogya Aham Hospital. In the hospital there was a poster of a skeleton of an AIDS patient. While we were standing in the queue a person came to me and asked about our problems. I told them that my husband had recently died of TB [tuberculosis]. When I said this, the person just smiled and invited me to go with her to have a talk. There, I met another woman who asked if I had any problems, and she gave me a pamphlet about HIV/AIDS.

Although I knew that my husband had died of AIDS, I did not reveal this to her at this time. When I went home I thought about it. I felt confidence in the woman that I had met and I liked the atmosphere of the place. I decided I would go back and talk to her the following week, and would disclose my husband’s status. The following week when I went back I met with her and with a counsellor called Pitchaimani. He encouraged me to talk about the things that were worrying me, and I burst into tears and told him how my husband had died, and that I was also HIV positive. He comforted me by saying: "We are all in this together". He himself had been living with the virus for eight years.

He said that there were millions infected, not just us two. There were even many in our own district. I was very curious to see who they were. I wanted to meet them. He told me that his organisation needed me, and I was very keen to participate. From then on, there was no looking back.

I wanted to work full-time for people with HIV and do support and counselling. That is why I joined Seva Nilayam. I volunteered. I love my job as an outreach worker, where I get a lot of time to interact with people living with HIV and AIDS.

Initially, I was very shy. I didn’t want to come out. But now I am motivating other people and encouraging them to come out and disclose their status. People say, "Because of Rani I have come out and my parents now understand me." They trust me and that makes me happy.