Appeal: A Christmas Tale, 2003 - A mother and son, the ravages of Aids and a continent's plight
24 December 2003Declan Walsh
Bernard was out picking mangoes, said Florence, his mother, smiling. He would be in soon. Outside in the banana groves and coffee fields, it was swelteringly hot. Christmas was coming, and her five children would soon be cutting wild flowers to decorate their sparse living-room.
Moments later the dusty-kneed seven-year-old bounced in and flopped into an armchair. "My boy," beamed Florence with undisguised love. Tomorrow they will put on their best clothes, walk to church and have a meal with meat, a rare treat. It will be a poignant celebration, because it could be one of their last.
Mother and son are preparing for what aid workers politely term "separation". In plain language it means that Florence, who is HIV-positive, is getting ready to die.
For now, she looks the picture of health. Well-built with smooth, dark skin, the mother of five hasn't had anything more serious than a cold since testing positive in 1998. But one day that luck will run dry. Her immune system will stumble, then crumble. Disease will swoop, most likely malaria. Then, like her husband before her, she will die.
But she will not be forgotten. Florence's life, loves and legacy are recorded in her "memory book" - a groundbreaking concept spreading across Africa and championed in Uganda by Save the Children, one of three charities that Independent readers are helping this Christmas.
Part family history, part will, the memory books jumble together stories, snapshots, family trees, inventories, reflections and wishes. More than 200 women in Bwera, a village near the Congolese border, are preparing them. The handwritten, intimate books are a record of the past and, more importantly, a plan for the future.
"People are not good at making wills here. So it's important to think about what happens afterwards, so children do not feel alone when their mother has gone," said Joshua Ainabyona, an HIV/Aids programme officer for Save the Children.
Florence has dedicated her memory book to Bernard. Every evening after dinner she sat with her children and filled a copybook with thoughts, memories and plans. It took five weeks. Page one is titled "The Story of Our Family".
Their home is on "a piece of land about two acres with a banana plantation on it plus some coffee" it says. There is a photograph of a handsome man standing proudly by a gleaming motorbike. It is Florence's husband, Jackson. His ancestors came from the Rwenzoris, the great wall of mountain that rises behind their house, and lived in a "grass thatch house" until the couple married in 1980.
They came from distinct traditions. Jackson's clan believed in eating a bird called akisukali in the local Lhukhonzo language. But Florence's family did not eat the bird - a way of signifying difference. As a girl, Florence sold cassava leaves at market. She wanted to become a teacher but "things didn't work out". Since then her Christian faith and the advice of elders have guided her "in a straight line". But now she is HIV-positive. One line explains why. "This disease is believed to have been brought by our father."
To write the book, Florence had to explain to her children how her husband contracted HIV from sleeping with another woman, then passed it to her. The painful disclosure, previously unspoken in the family, was a vital step in the process. "It has brought us very close together. Before I knew my problem but I could never tell my children," she said.
Bernard was born in 1995, six months before Jackson died, his body shrivelled and racked with cerebral malaria. So the smiling boy could be HIV-positive too, but she thinks he doesn't. "He's a healthy young boy like any other," she said, adding that he has never been tested.
Her 19-year-old daughter, Jennifer, wept as she explained how the memory book helped her to come to terms with her mother's illness. "When I read it I know my mother can die. But it gives me courage to struggle hard so that in case of anything, I am there to help," she said.
Originally developed by a group of mothers in Britain, the memory book concept has spread to several African countries. As well as overcoming stigma and helping families to face the realities of HIV/Aids, they are also crucial to ensuring the children's welfare after both parents are dead.
Lists of relatives, including addresses, ensure that children have an established network of potential helpers. And the inventories of property, cattle, money and even bicycles prevents relatives from claiming the children's inheritance.
Under the presidency of Yoweri Museveni, Uganda has led Africa in the fight against HIV/Aids, but still more than 6 per cent of adults are infected. Around Bwera, the rate is 15 per cent.
Florence and other women found the strength to write the memory books through a local men's group supported by Save the Children. At the weekly meeting, 20 HIV-positive women sat under a tin-roofed shelter. Just one said her husband was still alive.
"It's like this," said Beatrice Kabugho. "Our husbands never told us they had Aids, and they died. But we sit with our children and tell them the truth. It will be different with us."
