Just so you know, on this page you will find the second half of the tour. Don't forget to read about how it all began.
So you don't have to scroll down too much or look too far, here is a link to postings and pictures of the beginning of the South Africa Tour: http://www.thembisaidsdiarytour.vox.com/library/posts/2007/03
You might also know that Melikhaya, my boyfriend, has become the official photographer of the Thembi's AIDS Diary project. He photographed me for an entire year while I was recording the diary. When I went to the US, he photographed all of the events, interviews and even got experience shooting a video for MTV about the US tour.
This time he taped, on video, the entire South Africa Tour. Get a glimpse of me in action in Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban, Mthatha (formerly Umtata), East London, Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Khayelitsha township, Masipumulele township and addressing Parliament on March 29th.
Check out Melikhaya's 5 min VIDEO!
You can also listen to my story by visiting Thembi's AIDS Diary
There are also other really cool stories on the Radio Diaries site.
Don't forget to post comments and thoughts.
It is strange what happens when I am very nervous. I think a million things but as soon as I sit down and see those faces staring backat me, I realize they are only human...aside form all the politics. I stopped caring that they were ministers of this and ministers of that.
I was there just to talk about my story, not to talk about politics. Knowing that makes me free to say what I want to say.
Many thoughts were still racing through my head. Would people take me seriously? After all, HIV/AIDS is the daily bread in South Africa, and these people must be tired of talking about it. What made my story so interesting
At the same time, I felt that this was different. Not because my story was different but because they had me face to face. There I was telling the big people in my country that there is a bright side to all of this. That HIV/AIDS is a challenge, not a death sentence and discrimination can only cause death.
You should have seen the response. People laughed and cried and made beautiful comments. They introduced themselves as if I was one of them, a big person in government. It was an honor. The Speaker of Parliament said that, "I have a future." Hearing that from someone so high in Parliament made me happy because people look up to her and by saying that she was looking up to me. I felt special in a way I never had before.
All of this made me think that something is changing in South Africa and that by the look of their faces at least I helped that change a little bit. There are seeing that there is a big problem and only with seeing can there be action.
The next day I opened up The Sunday Independent Newspaper and read something like:
Thembi's presentation in Parliament was "compelling" and a "step in the right direction" for a country that has been "grappling for years with institutional silence on AIDS."
I don't know about all of that, but I know that my story is the story of every South African, and I think those big people saw that in me that day.
Masipumulele Township
Masipumulele is a township outside of Cape Town. It is similar to my township, Khayelitsha. Many people in Masipumulele are infected but the people are afraid to disclose and speak out. Sometimes when the community finds out you are positive, the discriminate against you, tease you and make you feel worthless. The same day I addressed the big people in Parliament, I went to address some of the most at risk township teenagers of South Africa.
Masipumulele High School is going through big problems with discrimination against positive people. Teachers asked me to come and speak because a 16 year-old was seen at a clinic and word spread that she had HIV. Everyone at school harassed her and the young girl even tried to commit suicide.
The reason why I accepted to speak here was because I could see myself in that girl. I could feel what she was feeling and I know that when you find out you are positive you want to die, and any bit of support can help you want to keep on living.
I was welcomed with songs, laughter, posters and 900 students. I have never addressed so many teenagers at the same time! What I have learned from speaking with young people is that you can only make them listen if they know that you are putting yourself in their shoes and speaking their language. You will not get them to understand by being stiff and acting because they will only yawn and stay in their ways.
Once they think you are hip and cool and you have their attention, then you tell them the truth. "You see me just like you, hip, cool and partying. Well, I have AIDS." I told them that having AIDS is not nice and that instead of teasing they should find out their status first.
Especially in township communities, we are all at risk and they must see this. I want to make them see that while they tease and discriminate, they do not know that tomorrow they can be discriminated against too. When I found out I was positive, I left school because I was afraid kids would discriminate against me. Nobody should have to leave school because of that. I wanted to make sure that they knew what power they had.
When they began asking questions, I maintained the full attention of all of them. I knew their questions and doubts because they had been my own. We were all township kids from the same city. I know their language and know it's power. They shouted, clapped and we talked about family, love, growing up, township life and living positively. I know that they understood and that I changed how these 900 teenagers viewed HIV/AIDS.
After the event two girls from the township came to find me. They asked me, "Is it true that you are sick?" I said, "Yes, it's true." They did not believe me! She said if you have AIDS, you are supposed to be thin and sick... I tried to make her understand, but as we said goodbye I could tell she thought I was lying.
Making people think that I am not HIV positive and seeing me healthy is probably the best thing I am doing for South Africa. Because I am attacking the stigma and I am making people feel differently about their country, about young, black teenagers, about township life, about HIV/AIDS.
This was a great way to end the tour!
Ubuntu Education Fund is a great organization that works with high schools in the townships of Port Elizabeth. They invited me to Port Elizabeth to speak to some of their students.
It was here that I think I can say that I am officially famous. The presentation was in Xhosa in the township of Zwaide at Ndzondelelo High School to 100 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 19. There was no electricity in most of the classrooms and we had to run a cable from one of the main rooms across the school. The presentation was originally for 40
When I arrived teenagers were rushing to me and looking from far away with joy as if I was some super star. Others were singing and dancing trying to squeeze into the classroom. The presentation was in Xhosa and everyone was listening closely. Kids outside were pressing their eyes and ears up against the windows of the classroom trying to see and hear.
Port Elizabeth has one of the highest infection rates of the country here I was in the center knowing that everything I said could change how they saw AIDS. I know that they live surrounded by HIV/AIDS, the way I do in
After the presentation herds of young people crowded me, asking for
The head of Ubuntu Education Fund ended the presentation by saying that we are all the face of AIDS. If one person has AIDS, are all infected. He also said that medicine alone cannot cure AIDS but working together, discussing and supporting each other is the only way to really fight it.
Umhlobo Venene
We then went to the famous Xhosa radio station, Umhlobo Venene. This
I gave my phone number on the air and over the next two hours received more than fifteen calls from all over the country. Women with no access to clinics and a young girl asking how long she should keep her virginity. Others asking me to go speak at their communities, asking about ARV's, access to them and side effects. Many just wanted advice.
I loved it! It felt like one of those advice articles you read in magazines.
The Journalism & Media Studies Department at Rhodes University is a building that has beautiful colors and art on the walls. An entire wall has "South African style" radios hanging from it.
We were there to present to a class of journalists, many who wanted to do documentaries and know about my experience recording the diary and working with Joe (the producer of my diary).
Mostly the talk was about what it was like to record in English and not Xhosa, my native language. The students were all South African, but all had different backgrounds. Many of them even seemed a little angry at me for agreeing to English.I told them that at the beginning of this project I did not even want to show my identity. I did not want pictures or my name to be part of the diary. I was doing the diary for people in the US, to be broadcast only on US radio.
To do the diary in Xhosa is something I would have never agreed to. Disclosure in a Xhosa community is the same as a death sentence. English gave me freedom, you see. Freedom to interview my family, to talk about my status to the recorder and to make the recorder my best friend. It was like I was telling somebody else´s´story, not my own.
I only decided to be open to my family and community about this project when got very sick. So sick that I did not even want to go to the hospital because I felt like I was going to die and everyone would know I died of AIDS. At the hospital I was surrounded by people from my community dying from this disease like flies. There I saw that they were dying from AIDS, but they were also dying from not disclosing. It was then that I thought, how can I be doing this for the US and not for South Africa? It is in South Africa that people need to hear this.
At that moment I knew I had to tell my father, the only person in my family that did not know. The students wanted to know why I had done it with a recorder and in English. Some of them even felt that it was not right to record it. To be honest, English and the recorder made me feel free to say, "I have AIDS." Even if later I had to tell him in Xhosa, at the moment, I had said it. What some of them did not see is that I would not have been able to find the words because Xhosa women do not talk with their fathers about sex, and AIDS is all about sex -- AIDS is seen as the dirtiest part of sex.
There was a lot of talk about culture in this presentation. One thing I
have learned is that AIDS has no language or culture. It does not care
about race or money or my culture. It is in a disease of the blood and all of us are at risk.
We hit the road to Grahamstown and this time I was to present to an audience of university students, many who were journalists and activists. The last time I spoke to a university audience was in the US. They asked me many questions about politics and the government in my country. I was afraid that this audience would do the same and I would not know how to answer. Sometimes audiences forget that I am just presenting my story. I am not an expert on AIDS and politics.
The event was organized by the School of Journalism and Media Studies and SHARC (Students HIV AIDS Resistance Campaign), one of the biggest university organizations working around AIDS awareness in the country.
We presented in an auditorium and were expecting about 50 people and I thought only white people would come. When the presentation began people were crowding the stairways because it was so full. I would say that this was the perfect presentation with the perfect audience. The audience had people from everywhere -- Xhosa people, Zulu people, white people, colored people, people from Capetown, Jo'burg and Durban.
Most of them either studied something in media or did AIDS work in communities and townships. So I felt that they listened different. They paid more attention. When the clips would play, you could hear a pin drop. And they would laugh when it was funny, thye would say "aaahh...," when it was time to go "aaaah." It was like they were really listening closely and because they were young South Africans, they felt like my story was also their story.
When the presentation was over and they came to congratulate me and then I felt like their story was also my story. I felt that South Africa was changing through them, their questions, their work. One young woman said to me:
"One of the greatest challenges of HIV / AIDS work is reaching young people through young people. No matter how hip or creative our methods reaching the 15 to 25 age group is a challenge. You are exactly what South Africa needs. A willing and eloquent woman sharing her story and eradicating stigma by normalizing her status. Your willingness to discuss is admirable. But what is more important is that teenagers see that you are just a young, beautiful and funny chic -- and everything they would aspire to be."
I was so excited to be on the road, driving away from the Bulungula. Although I was glad to have seen a new side of South Africa. The drive to East London showed me how beautiful South Africa is. We were driving on the edge of a mountain and I was looking over rivers, forests and the sun hiding behind hills and valleys ...
East London was like a fantasy. Not because it is more beautiful than Cape Town or more famous than Jo'burg, but because it is a place that I had only heard about in stories.
On our free day I visited family in Mdantsane, a very classy and modern township in East London. We had dinner over the seashore and I got to have a nice, hot bath at the B&B.
The Nelson Mandela Institute for Rural Schooling and Development
The Nelson Mandela Institute for Rural Schooling and Development organizes a peer leadership education program where high school kids talk about HIV / AIDS. I was invited to speak about my story and and the importance of being a leader in a community.The students were from Ebenezer Majomboli High School and Kulani High School from Mdantsane.
The woman who organized this, Fezeka, was so inspiring to me. She got the kids singing, dancing, thinking and reading poems. We sang Ndino Sanalwam, a song about childhood. Fezeka was trying to make us see that we are the future leaders of South Africa and we must educate ourselves, "Realize that the less you know about HIV, the more in trouble you will find yourselves in."
I felt honored when Fezeka said that I was following the way of Mandela -- planting seeds of knowledge in people's heads, striving to make an impact and leave a mark. "We must be pencils," she said, "and leave marks. An eraser may erase a mark but a pencil will mark again because that is its nature. If a sharpener comes to cut away at me, I must see it as a challenge. A challenge may threaten to destroy me, but after it has passed, it will have made me sharper and made my mark stronger." - I really like that.
As a South African I know the way these teenagers think. We share a common language and I try my best to present in a way that will motivate them to ask questions. I have gotten good at picking a small topic that will get their attention to talk about a bigger topic. Many had boyfriends and girlfriends. So I knew and from their laughter that my relationship with Melikhaya would be a way to talk about stigma, denial and getting tested. I know that to them, I represent a situation that they could be in.
Melikhaya stole the show again. I was asked if "my boyfriend" still loved me. I pointed to him in the first row and told the girl to ask him herself. She did, and Melikhaya answered, "bendingasoze ndibekanti ndilapha ukuba bendingamthandi," which means in Xhosa; "I wouldn't be here if I didn't love her."
After the event the kids wanted to take pictures and girls were giggling behind Melikhaya. This presentation made me see that I would not be able to do these events in the same way without him. I would not have the same strength. If he would have chosen to leave me, I would have continued with my life but the fact that he is with me just proves that being true to oneself is a way of life. If you love yourself then you can give love and receive love.
