Maria

Many people in Khayelitsha are finding out they are HIV positive. Jane has made beautiful paintings with everyone and I didn’t think I could but I have caught up to the same level. I have told you my terrible life but my painting tells my story another way. Right up to now with my child. If you like, you can read it in the book.

This is myself, my body with some marks.I drew these dots on my baby too before I knew he was positive or thought he was positive. I drew him in the womb because at first he was having my antibodies. And I draw this one pineapple as I drew in my memory book because I grew up in the land of pineapples.

You can see these two red lines on my neck. I was cut by a sangoma . Actually in our tradition, when the lightning strike on somebody’s house, all these people in that area are called by the sangoma to do marks like this on the body so the lightning does not come again to that area.

I got AZT, 23 July to 27 August, before I go to the labour. I already had the name for my child, Zimbenathi (Be with us God). My main thought was that God must be with us so he can be negative but at nine months he tested positive and I decided to pray on the mountain of Zion where the headquarters of my church, ZCC, is. To pray that my child can be negative.

The Bishop did say OK, we are going to pray for you and your child but also in my church we have didayelo , black coffee or black tea, that they give us to drink after praying on it.

(After returning from her Church, Maria retested her child and he tested negative. She disclosed her HIV status to her husband, began a computer course, was emerging as a leader in the group, and was looking forward to a longer and better life. In December 2002, on her way to her home village, where she planned to harvest some wild red carrots for the A-team, the mini bus taxi she was in had a head on collision while overtaking a truck. Maria, Zimbenathi, and her husband were all burned to death. Her teenage daughter Luleka was thrown out the window and survived.)

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