Superboy in sunglasses – Ricardo Herrera, Ecuador

RICARDO HERRERA, aged 32, is a counsellor for Vida Libre, an NGO that serves HIV positive people in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Ricardo visits people in the hospital and at home, giving treatment advice, encouragement and support. Ricardo was diagnosed in February 1991, making this his fourteenth year of life with HIV. He has been off antiretroviral medication for eight months due to a complication with his private suppliers in Brazil.

It all started when Victor, my former partner, suggested that we went for an HIV test. I didn’t want to. I used to say, "Why me? I haven’t got anything?" Anyway, one day he went behind my back and had a test, but it was ages before we got the results.

All that time we were losing weight. Once we were at a party and a friend said, "You two are so skinny you probably have AIDS."

Before we got the results of the test, Victor became ill and I started feeling that there was something badly wrong. One night I came home drunk from a bar, and as I walked up to the house I saw Victor sitting there with all the lights on. He looked so serious I knew he had the results of the test. He put his arms around me and asked if I was going to leave him, and I said, "No, I love you." You know, now I am with César and I care about him a lot, but I think that Victor will always be the great love of my life.

I went downstairs. I felt shattered and I buried my head in a cushion and began screaming and crying.

After that Victor’s health continued to decline. I took him to the hospital. He had two critical periods when he had to be hospitalised. We were not well treated. Today the hospital is like heaven in comparison with what it was then.

While he was in the hospital Victor and I made each other a promise. We agreed that when he recovered we would go back to the hospital and help all the people that we knew there – perhaps advising them on which was the best doctor or where they could go for help, who they could talk to.

When Victor first became ill his family turned their backs on him because they did not accept our relationship. I looked after him – I broke myself working and caring for him – running to the hospital, trying to earn a living. We were getting low on money.

Because of all this stress my own body started to deteriorate. I didn’t have any support, not even from my friends. My employer told everybody what it was that I had, and it destroyed my friendships in the gay circle. There was nobody to help us. The hospital gave me the option of being an ambulatory patient, so that when I was well I could get up and go out, and look after Victor.

When I was in the hospital, I used to call my mother every day and tell her I was fine. I said I was travelling. When I was going in and out of hospital I always tried to keep to the quieter streets so that nobody saw me. My family never found out that I had been sick.

Victor recovered slightly and I took him home. Together we visited the hospital regularly to see friends we had left behind. We started sharing what we had learnt in the hospital and sometimes we could help. Victor found this very stressful – especially when one of the boys died. This put a strain on his health and he became ill a third and final time.

By now the people in the hospital knewus quitewell. I was one of the few people in the hospital allowed to lie in the bed with his partner. Victor was in the hospital for eight months this time. There were so many drugs: two tables were filled with medicines, and the prescriptions sat in huge piles next to his bed. I started reading up about them and realised that a lot of the medicationswere for the same things. I decided to learn as much as I could. That is why I know such a lot now.

Victor got worse, until the day he could hardly sit up and talk. I was terrified of the doctor in charge because he just told you everything up front. One day he came to me and said there was nothing more he could do. He just said, "Take him home."

We decided to leave the hospital at night, because in my neighbourhood there were a lot of inquisitive people. Everyone from the hospital came to the door to say goodbye. I told them, "One day I will come back to this hospital, but it will be under different conditions."

That night I put Victor to bed and I was exhausted. I always tried to sleep with my arm over him, but that night I was woken by a loud bang. Victor had fallen out of bed trying to go to the bathroom. I put him back in bed and he just lay on his side looking at me. I was surprised when he licked my nose and laughed. He said, "Thanks for everything." Soon after that he fell into a coma. I was devastated. I cried rivers every day. I couldn’t eat and got sicker and sicker myself.

One day our landlady came to visit. She was one of the few people who had been good to us. She was trying to cheer me up and encourage me to eat. She asked to see pictures of Victor when he was well and healthy. We propped him up on his side so that he could breathe better and we began turning the pages of the album. For a moment I was distracted. The landlady looked at Victor and she said, "He’s gone."

I tried to be calm and to accept what had happened. I already had his clothes ready and I dressed him and telephoned his family and we took him to the cemetery.

After Victor died it took me about ten days to recover. I used to cry every day and I couldn’t eat because I had swollen glands. But I started trying to recover my life. I told myself: "I made a promise. I have things to do."

I began training as a counsellor. I realised that I really liked it and enjoyed visiting the hospital. Even when I couldn’t help people in some material way I would at least be able to cheer them up. I would go to guys who were having a serious health crisis and I would say, "If I could recover, so can you." One of my greatest satisfactions is being able to put a smile on the face of a young person who is dying, and hear them saying to me, "You are the best."

So that is how I started my life in social work. I also became a public figure in HIV and AIDS. I went to different TV stations – at first I was only seen as a silhouette. Then I started visiting high schools. I showed my face for the first time in the newspaper. Now everybody knows me as ‘the boy from the association with the sunglasses on his head’.