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Middle class girl struggles to lead normal life, despite AIDS drug side effects
Darren Taylor | Pretoria,South Africa 30 November 2009
“Sorry ma’am, but your baby is not growing. She has a killer1 disease. She won’t live very long.”
Looking up from her books with sparkly eyes and a cheeky smile, the HIV-positive teenager tells VOA, “Death is the last thing on my mind. I’ve big plans for the future….”
She gives her name as “Bernice Sathekge” – a real girl with a fictitious2 name given to reporters to protect herself and family from what is still the social taboo3 of HIV/AIDS.
Bernice is accustomed to breaking moulds and defying clichés. She’s been doing it since she was a few months old when doctors told her mother, Joyce, “Sorry ma’am, but your baby is not growing. She has a killer disease. She won’t live very long….”
Bernice, as a toddler, in the arms of her mother. Her mother unwittingly transmitted HIV to her, probably during childbirth
Bernice is now almost 16 and a top student and champion athlete at a high school in the South African capital, Pretoria. She’s also one of more than five and a half million South Africans living with HIV.
Tuesday, on World AIDS Day, with elaborate events to commemorate4 the occasion across the globe, Bernice is focused only on an upcoming exam.
Not your average HIV+ family
In 1994, Joyce Sathekge unwittingly passed HIV on to Bernice, probably at birth or during breastfeeding. The mother didn’t know she had the virus.
“I thought I was safe from HIV. I was educated. I was working for one of the world’s biggest NGOs. But I didn’t know my husband was sleeping around. He died of full-blown AIDS in 1999,” Joyce recalls.
The Sathekge family’s not typical of most South Africans who are HIV-positive. They don’t live in a shack5 in one of the country’s enormous impoverished6 townships. They live in a comfortable, three-bedroom home in a middle-class suburb. Their friends and neighbors are businesspeople, teachers and civil servants. They’re literate7 and articulate. They have a steady income. Poverty and a lack of education, often cited as key drivers of the epidemic8, don’t apply to the Sathekges.
“We’re a lesson for everyone who thinks HIV/AIDS only affects the poor. We are as middle class as can be, yet here we sit, HIV-positive and having to eat pills every day to stay alive,” Joyce says.
Horrible side effects
Sitting with her friends on the tomato red plastic chairs of a fast food restaurant, picking at hamburgers and joking about “stupid” teachers, Bernice acknowledges she’s on a “desperate” quest for normality. She indeed appears to be an average suburban9 teenage female -- complete with girly giggles10, gushes11 about “hot guys” and constant moaning about schoolwork.
But every night of her life, at precisely12 nine ‘o clock, Bernice is reminded that she’s not normal, and never will be. That’s when she pops two large, beige and sky blue tablets into her mouth and washes them down with a glass of water. Bernice swallows hard -- and laughs. But her humor disguises her disgust. The medicine lines her mouth with a bitter slime. It makes her nauseous, gives her “very bad dreams” and makes her so “dizzy” she can’t stand
The pretty girl’s been taking antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for more than a decade, since she was four years old. If she didn’t take the pills, Bernice would probably contract a serious infection and die. She’s grateful that she’s one of the relatively13 few HIV-infected South Africans with access to the life-prolonging medication. But she still “hates” the ARVs.
“I’m absent a lot from school because of the pills’ side effects,” Bernice says, and then hastily adds, “I don’t blame my mom, I don’t blame my dad; I don’t blame anyone (for my HIV-positive status). You just get the feel of it and it becomes part of you in a way. Then you have to live it and understand it.”
Terrified of people finding out
But Bernice clearly carries the mental scars of her condition. She still blanches14 with embarrassment15 when remembering a classroom incident a few years back, when she was about to write a mathematics test.
“I had taken my pills the night before. I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I’m going to fail; I’m going to fail.’ And the thought of me failing and the thought of me drinking the tablets, making me dizzy, just caused me to throw up on my exam paper.”
At the time Bernice was “very frustrated” because she couldn’t tell anyone the “truth” about why she’d been sick…. Only a few of her trusted friends and teachers know she’s infected with HIV, and she says she’s “terrified” of others finding out. Bernice lives in a country where discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS is rife16.
“There are some mean people in school,” she says, her voice shaking. “They call those with HIV dirty, they say they have no morals, they say, ‘These HIV people are being punished by God for sins….’” Her voice trails off into a sigh. “What sins have I committed?” she asks.
Bernice is sometimes tempted17 to challenge prejudice but fears that doing so would expose the fact that she’s HIV-infected – something she doesn’t think she could manage. “I’m very easy to break down, actually. I’d want to leave the school (and) probably leave the country,” she says.
So, to preserve her secret, when Bernice hears youngsters making discriminatory jokes about HIV infected people she laughs along with them…. Something she says “hurts terribly.”
“There are people who can’t accept (HIV/AIDS). They don’t understand it. They’ll be scared of me. I don’t want people to be scared of me,” Bernice says, her eyes glistening18 with tears.
Champion swimmer
But she refuses to use HIV as “any sort of excuse” for not doing her best to excel. Bernice will soon graduate to grade 9, and has been among the top five students since the first grade.
She’s also one of her school’s leading swimmers.
“It all started in grade four when my teacher just threw me in the pool!” Bernice laughs. “And then I just actually swam, and I forced myself (to swim). And then from there I just became a good swimmer.”
Bernice holds the antiretroviral pills she has to take every night. She says she"hates" them, but knows they keep her alive
At the most recent interschool gala, she won all her races – but she acknowledges such excellence19 isn’t the norm.
“Sometimes I am so tired from the virus I can’t even make a single length. It weakens you, definitely,” she says. “I am sure I would be a much better swimmer if I wasn’t HIV-positive.”
The future
At least two and a half million South Africans have so far died from AIDS-related infections. Bernice realizes that if she doesn’t look after herself, and if she doesn’t take her ARVs properly, she could add to this number.
But she says she does her best not to think about death, even though AIDS fatalities20 are “all over the news” every day in South Africa. “I don’t really want to think of that because if I do, then I know I’ll be scared. I’ll be freaked out; I won’t even want to take my tablets. So I concentrate on life.”
And she dreams of the future.
“At first I wanted to be an archeologist, but now I want to be some sort of a counselor21, like a psychologist.”
On the question of whether she wants to marry and have children one day, Bernice becomes shy.
“I don’t know! Possibly,” she says.
Four years ago, Bernice’s mother gave birth to another baby girl. The child is HIV-negative, because Joyce Sathekge took the necessary precautions, including ARVs, which were also given to the baby.
“That gives me hope that maybe I will also be able to have kids one day,” Bernice says.
She’s also been thinking about talking more publicly about her HIV-positive status and her struggles. Bernice is convinced that the more public examples like her, of middle class people living with HIV/AIDS, the better.
“People still think it’s just poor people who get HIV/AIDS…. Maybe I could save a life if I spoke22 out, in public. Maybe I’ll do it when I am more mature,” Bernice says.
Right now, though, she’s focused only on passing to grade 9, where further challenges await. Bernice says she’s ready to meet them.
“Life is short, for everyone,” she says. “We must live as much as we can. Whether we are HIV-positive or not, life is a fight to survive….”
收听单词发音 |
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killer
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| n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者 | |
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fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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commemorate
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| vt.纪念，庆祝 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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impoverished
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| adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化 | |
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literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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gushes
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| n.涌出，迸发( gush的名词复数 )v.喷，涌( gush的第三人称单数 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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blanches
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| v.使变白( blanch的第三人称单数 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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rife
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| adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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glistening
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| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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fatalities
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| n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运 | |
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counselor
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| n.顾问，法律顾问 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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