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Everybody seemed to agree that the suffering was hitting the African continent especially hard.
Christine said: "It's as if there's no end to it. I read about our continent. It is as if we Africans are concerned only with dying, not with living. But it's not like that, of course. Even if all these diseases hit us especially hard."
Of course there were many people who also maintained that the West was conspiring in some remarkable way with various gods. The overworld and the underworld had combined to destroy the African people with the help of this virus.
Christine again: "I've heard that some people think the disease originated in animals, especially the apes, and that we got the disease inside us when we ate meat from apes. But couldn't it just as well be that we have always carried the disease inside us? Maybe it has always been inside, us but it is only now that it has been given a name."
What did Moses think? He shrugged.
"Is it important? I can't tell you the answer, nobody can. Why should I spend my time worrying about that? My time is already limited. Death is wherever there is life. Death sometimes wears visible clothing, sometimes he makes himself invisible."
I spoke to everybody, including Gladys and Beatrice. The answers varied, but were always evasive.
33
In the end I spoke to Aida as well. We were in among the banana trees, but not to look at her mango plant: we were trying to find one of the black piglets that had decided to run away. Aida found it and pounced on it before it had a chance to escape her grasp. We carried it back to the pen. Then Aida went to wash her hands.
It was she who asked the question: "Where does it come from, this disease that Mum has?"
"I don't know. Different people think different things. But it's a virus, a so-called micro-organism."
"Why is it only people here who get it?"
"It isn't only here. People get infected just the same in the country I come from."
Aida thought about that.
"Where did it start? In your country or here in ours?"
"Probably here, but nobody knows for certain."
Aida seemed depressed. We walked back to the houses and the courtyard where a cockerel with an injured leg was limping about.
"I think the disease comes from somebody who wants to harm us," Aida suddenly said.
"Who would that be?"
"I don't know."
"Diseases don't come from 'somebody'. Diseases are there all the time. They develop and change. Eventually people start to die of them. It has always been like that."
Aida said nothing more. As we walked towards the raffia mat where Christine sat cleaning a wound on Aida's youngest sister's foot, she aimed a kick at the cockerel who fluttered away, cackling angrily.
Aida could get at the cockerel, but not at the 'somebody' she thought had inflicted the disease on her mother.
But I can't be certain what Aida believed or didn't believe.
34
There are many fallacies about Aids. Not least with regard to what happens in the critical stages that lead to death, what is known as "full-blown" Aids. One of the fallacies is that the really horrific aspect of the disease is the way it strikes in haphazard fashion, and often affects very young people. What creates angst in a person is the psychological torment of knowing that you are going to die early from a disease that you could have avoided. The physical symptoms, as the disease takes hold, are that you lose a lot of weight, grow very tired, might have a lot of sores, and then die of something like pneumonia when your immune system can no longer cope. There is rarely any mention of the fact that Aids can lead to a mental deterioration that causes suffering worse than practically anything else.
The people I spoke to in Uganda seemed to be aware of this, however. They didn't hide behind fallacies even if the illusion might have been a temporary consolation. It seemed to me that Moses, Christine, Gladys and all the rest approached what was in store for them with their eyes wide open. It was a duel they had already lost. Once again it was that dignity that I couldn't help but notice everywhere, and that I think of now above all else as I write these words. The dignity that was so important to all those who had been infected with the disease.
On one occasion we met, I told Christine a story. It was about something I experienced in the early 1990s in northern Mozambique. A few days later when I went back to her house, she asked me to tell her the story again. This time Aida was there too.
It was a story about dignity.
During the long and difficult civil war that ravaged Mozambique – from the early 1980s until 1992 – I made a journey to the Cabo Delgado province in the north. One day in November 1990, I was in a place just south of the border with Tanzania. The area had been badly affected by the war. Many people had been killed or crippled, and starvation was widespread since most of the crops had been burnt. It was like entering an Inferno where misery rose like smoke all along the dusty roads.
One day I took a path that led to a tiny village. A young man came walking towards me. It seemed as if he was walking out of the sun. His clothes were in tatters. He could have been nineteen, maybe twenty. When he came closer, I noticed his feet. I saw something I shall never forget as long as I live. I can see it before my very eyes as I am telling this tale now. Rarely does a day pass when I don't think about this boy who was coming towards me as if from out of the sun. What did I see? His feet. He had painted shoes on to his feet. He had mixed paint from the soil and preserved his dignity for as long as possible. He had no boots, no shoes, nothing, not even a pair of sandals made from the remains of a car tyre. As he had no shoes, he had to make some himself, so he painted a pair of shoes on to his feet, and in doing so he boosted his awareness that, despite all his misery and destitution, he was a human being with dignity.
I thought at the time and I still think now that of all the strangers I have met in my life, this meeting may have been the most important of all. For what he told me with his feet was that human dignity can be preserved and maintained when all else seems lost. I learned that we should all be aware that there could come a day when we too will have to paint shoes on to our feet. And when that day comes, it is important that we know that we possess that ability. I don't know what his name was. He couldn't speak Portuguese and I didn't understand his language. I have often wondered what became of him. He is most probably dead, though I have no way of knowing for sure. But the image of his feet will always be with me.
It was like telling a fairy story, I thought. But Christine knew it was true. She turned to Aida.
"Do you understand what he is talking about?" she asked.
Aida nodded. But she didn't say anything. And Christine didn't push her to provide an answer, like the sensible mother she was.