by Robyn Scott
I knew about it, of course. I’d learned in history classes about the civil war and the long bloody struggle for independence from white rule. And although it was never otherwise discussed among my black and white classmates, for many adult white Zimbabweans, the war lurked just beneath the surface, bubbling up in racist comments.
To me, it was a new kind of racism; for whereas in the Tuli Block and across the Limpopo racism was characterised by arrogance, here it ‘was almost inevitably infused with bitterness. “…Ruining their own country…happens every time in Africa, look at Zambia, look at Mozambique…you know I always said it would happen, and look, now it’s happened…Look at the economy, they just can’t manage their own money…look at the corruption…probably would have been better off under Ian Smith after all…damn munts…”
I’d heard worse from whites in the Tuh Block – blacks are stupid, dirty, lazy, undeserving. But there, coming from people who poached on each other’s farms and only fished in the months containing an R, such statements always seemed more ludicrous than anything else – revolting, but not entirely surprising. Here, the generally milder white racism was much more unsettling. For here the comments came from the parents of friends, or adults at the almost all-white horse shows – people I liked and respected, whose opinions I valued. Quips like, “I don’t need a washing machine, I have a muntomatic,” would produce peals of laughter. Mum said, “Well, I’m pleased you’re disgusted. Though it doesn’t surprise me. Zambia was the same. You should thank your lucky stars you’ve grown up in Botswana and escaped that baggage.”
But as we stood atop the Heroes’ Acre hill, and our guides began to narrate the years of white repression and brutality, the bloodshed, and the brave deeds of the black heroes whose tombs surrounded us, I realised that for now, here at least, I hadn’t escaped. As they spoke, voices rising with passion, I crept back against a tall stone wall, not wanting to meet their eyes, or those of the black students who looked suddenly sombre and, I imagined, much less friendly.
I felt embarrassed, indignant, and it was there, at seventeen, for the first time in my life, that I felt really white. Not white in the privileged-by-wealth-and-don’t-eat-mopane-worms way, but in the generic, heavy, guilty label-of-oppressor way. And for one of the first times in my life, too, I was lost for words.
I wanted to yell that I’d never had anything to do with this horrible past; that I was from Botswana, just next door, where there was hardly any of this. But I was white, and he was talking about whites, and one couldn’t argue with that. And gazing across the vast expanse of concrete and stone, up to the pinnacle on the top of the hill, down along the endless flights of steps that disappeared below, I longed, silently, for Botswana.
That’s what made AIDS in Botswana all the more impossibly tragic.
For although by the 1990s AIDS was quietly ravaging, and was to continue to ravage, much of the rest of Africa and beyond, it was in Botswana where the virus first really showcased itself in the developing world, catapulting this peaceful, prosperous country into the realm of imminent African catastrophes.
Botswana’s position as a transport gateway is thought to have kick-started it. Travelling down to South Africa, trucks from Uganda, the Congo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe passed through populous eastern Botswana. En route, drivers paused for hurried sexual encounters with poor local women. Quick sex, without a condom, earned about thirty pula. With condoms, the money was considerably less. But the women could also earn double the quick-sex fee. With ‘dry sex’, a prized speciality, there is no condom either. Additionally the woman pretreats her vagina with herbs or diluted bleach, which cause inflammation and prevent lubrication. With the resulting internal damage, the spread of the virus is almost certain.
Having arrived and taken root, the virus tore around the country, which has a highly mobile population compared ‘with its neighbours. The high proportion of migrant workers, many travelling from the rural areas to the cities or to South Africa, is believed to have fuelled this internal spread, splitting up families and increasing the chances of multiple sexual partners. Whatever the precise apportioning of blame – and this is still disputed – by the mid-1990s, when I went away to school, Botswana had one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world.
Little more than a decade after its first reported AIDS ca’se, it was estimated that around one-quarter of Botswana’s adults were HIV-positive.
Almost every holiday – with each term away, falling more in appreciation and love with our home – I’d return to some new sign or word of a change in gear in gentle Botswana’s own, first, terrible war.
In 1996, Dad stopped wearing plasters.
“You forgot your plasters.”
“Don’t need them any more’.”
“What?”
His scratches, he explained, were now always covered. No longer would he touch a patient without gloves. Even for external examinations. “Just getting too damn risky.” In addition to the omnipresent gloves, now when Dad injected babies he had a second nurse to hold the child in case it thrashed and caused a needle stick injury. In case this failed, and he or his nurses got a needle stick, he now also carried around a course of the new emergency antiretrovirals – postexposure prophylaxis, or PEP. Taken within hours and for a month, these were more than 95 percent effective in preventing infection.
“So you can at last stop worrying, Robbie,” he said, “I’m not going to get it. Worry about everyone else who’s got it. For them, there’s nothing.”
After his clinics, the strain on Dad’s face now told of more than just exhaustion and boredom. “If the government doesn’t bloody do something,” he said bitterly, “a quarter of Botswana is going to die. A quarter!”
I thought about it; about a quarter of the people in the country just not being there. In Phikwe, infamous for Botswana’s highest prevalence, it was up to a half. I tried to imagine every second person in the busy Phikwe mall just gone. All lined up in coffins.
I couldn’t imagine it, and I quickly gave up. Shocked by the emotional anaesthetic of the stupendous figure, I didn’t like trying.
But incomprehensible as the impact was, at home, with Dad broadcasting facts and stories from his ringside seat, AIDS was too close and too horribly gripping not to think about. By 1995 close to half of his patients had full-blown AIDS. His practice had become defined by AIDS. Dad discussed AIDS often, from every angle, and in a series of his vignettes, arguments, and often appalling medical details, Lulu, Damien, and I were educated haphazardly in the sometimes absurd, tragic, and terrifying pieces of a disaster unfolding on an unprecedented scale.
Even in a country that doesn’t normally talk about lions, by the mid-1990s AIDS had become too great a problem to ignore. “When there are enough lions in the bush,” said Dad, “even the ostrich must take its head out of the sand.” The government had finally started dramatic HIV awareness and condom distribution campaigns, and within my last few years of school, AIDS and HIV became amongst the most famous acronyms in the country.
The evidence was plentiful. Thousands of people travelled weekly to hundreds of funerals for the young and suddenly sick. And everywhere, on every street, walked the painfully thin – which in Botswana one didn’t choose to be. Once, when I came home, having put on weight after months away from Mum’s wholesome lentil stews, Ruth greeted me and caught me by the arm. “Ah,” she said. “You are fatter, Robbie.” I blushed, indignant, but then saw Ruth’s admiring smile. She patted me appreciatively and walked off.
In the context of the inexplicably thin and the youthful dead, however, still AIDS was never mentioned. Everyone knew about AIDS, but no one officially died because of AIDS. Of TB, pneumonia, and cancer – but never AIDS.
“It’s not surprising,” said Dad. “When there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Everything was back to front. HIV awareness followed after most of the infections, and now the infections still hadn’t been followed with drugs. The dramatic but patc
hy awareness campaigns, combined with the lack of antiretroviral drugs, had fomented stigma, which fuelled comforting superstitions. People were talking about the lions, but getting the lions all wrong.
“You do not,” said Dad, again and again, “get it from sex with a woman who’s had a miscarriage.”
“But the jangoma told me,” the patients would argue.
“I generally lose,” said Dad. “Who wants to face a problem when it’s too late to do anything?”
This was the trouble with testing. Or not testing. Which was one of the particular troubles.
“Get Tested!” begged the government campaigns. “Know your status!”
But no one came forward. No one wanted to know his or her status. Dad, however, didn’t need to test to see the virus. With more and more people developing full-blown AIDS, the signs were obvious and rife: loss of appetite and weight loss, TB, oral or genital thrush, bad oral or genital herpes, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and other more subtle indicators, such as when the hair at the nape of the neck of black people with tightly curled hair would suddenly grow straight and downy.
In his clinics, Dad had put up posters saying ‘Get Tested!’ and bought testing kits. And then he’d thrown almost all of them away, unused and expired.
“Doesn’t surprise me, Keith. I know all about it. Fuck! It’s a disaster for this country.”
Charles Sheldon was one of those rare people who managed to render ‘fuck’ at once inoffensive and highly effective. If he added it to a compliment, the compliment felt all the more sincere. Now, as he shook his head, the word gave heightened gravity to his statement, and enhanced his uncharacteristically sombre expression.
Charlie was a property developer in Gaborone and an old friend of Mum and Dad’s. He was friends, it seemed, with just about everyone else too. Warm, generous, and legendarily sociable, he was known and liked throughout Gaborone and beyond. He returned the affection to everyone, unstintingly, and would just as readily throw his arm around his maid and say, “You’re so fucking cool, babe,” as he would around awkwardly affectionate Dad, or his other great friend, the beloved Lady Khama.
Charlie had got drunk and misbehaved at the parties and gatherings of the most important people in the country. He was always forgiven, however, and would be there again next time, behaving just as badly, entertaining, shocking, and charming everyone. He was a kind of younger, more reasonable, more sociable version of Grandpa Ivor.
Now, though, as we sat out in the gazebo after dinner, he was unusually serious and calm. He seemed serious and calm even next to Robyn, his wife, whose level serenity mostly made her husband seem even more manic than he was. Every now and again, Charlie would pay tribute to her by announcing, “Byns is cool, she’s a Buddhist.” Which always made me glad I wasn’t nicknamed from the second half of my name, and then made me wonder if I’d care, if I was a Buddhist.
Charlie, Byns, and their three boys had driven up from Gaborone for the weekend.
After an evening walk and dinner, the four adults were drinking and telling stories. Exhausted from hours in the pool, Damien and the Sheldon boys sprawled on the cushioned bed-benches where we – and a Mozambique spitting cobra – sometimes slept outside. Lulu, curled on the end of the mattress by the pool, stood up sleepily every few minutes, doggedly rescuing tiny flapping insects from the illuminated water.
I sat at the table, wanting to fall asleep but desperate not to miss out on any of the conversation. Which had, as conversations now usually did, eventually made its way to the inevitable discussion. Just as white South Africans always talked about the terrible crime, and white Zimbabweans always talked about the plummeting economy, at Botswana dinner tables white people now talked about AIDS.
“It was all there,” sighed Charlie. “The employees would have been able to buy their own houses. I would have made money. Lots of people would have made piles of money. It was good for everyone.”
For more than a year, Charlie had been putting together a multimillion-pula deal that would have provided individually owned houses to thousands of employees of one of Botswana’s largest institutions, through the provision of interest-free loans. Various building societies had agreed to finance the construction of the houses, and the debt would be repaid by rental income.
Even Charlie, known for pulling off the most politically tricky projects, had been amazed when all the details had been worked out and the agreements were finally in place.
The employees were told about the scheme and invited to sign up. Your own house, for an interest-free loan, they said, waiting lor a stampede.
No more than a handful came forward. In a few months, the whole project collapsed.
“No one saw this one coming.”
The building society loans were underwritten by a large insurance agency, which required each applicant to take out a life insurance policy. And each policy required a medical examination, which required an HIV test.
No one wanted to take an HIV test.
“I offer an effectively free house,” said Charlie, “and I still can’t get anyone to take a test. Keith, I don’t know how the fuck you’re going to get paying customers to let you take one.”
In 1996, a year later, Dad still hadn’t. So he did on-the-spot diagnoses. If someone had enough of the signs, Dad informed them that they almost certainly had AIDS. Word soon spread, and in just a few weeks, his practice numbers had fallen dramatically.
“I ran out of patience,” said Dad, smiling grimly, “and then I ran out of patients.”
His nurses said, “You are the only doctor who tells people they have AIDS. People don’t like it.”
“Tough,” said Dad. “I’m a doctor. It’s my responsibility.”
His nurses just shrugged. Dad continued to diagnose relentlessly, explaining to the patients that partners and children must be told and tested. Little by little his patients came back. But it took months for the numbers to return to normal.
And even then, no one wanted to test, to know for sure. Except for a single patient: a healthy-looking Motswana teacher, who didn’t have any of the signs.
“They say you do AIDS tests, Dr. Scott,” she said. “I want one.”
Surprised by her request, Dad was even more surprised by the result.
He double-checked it and turned to her, smiling. “You are HI V-negative,” he said.
“I don’t have AIDS?” asked the woman.
“No,” said Dad cheerfully, “and you are HIV-negative, so you won’t develop it.”
“But I have AIDS,” she insisted.
“What?” Dad stared at her, bewildered. “No you don’t, I promise. Look at your result.”
“You are lying,” she said, “I have AIDS. The whole of Botswana has AIDS. In this country, we all have AIDS.”
Dad fumed about the government.
Not, initially, about the lack of antiretrovirals: until the late 1990s, the medicines were still prohibitively expensive, even for the wealthy Botswana government. But about education and prevention – areas in which the government, in the early years of the epidemic, took too long to do too little.
Even well into the first campaign, there was still no comprehensive approach. One of the neglected problems that most angered Dad was that married couples of public sector employees were still regularly posted to different ends of the country. “They don’t do the most obvious things,” he’d mutter, after he’d had yet another teacher, nurse, or border official, asking for a medical certificate, stating that the stress of separation was affecting their health, to support their case for a transfer. “Makes so much of the good work go to waste,” said Dad. “It’s a bloody disgrace.”
At home, ‘Bloody disgrace’ was Dad’s general verdict about the government’s approach to AIDS. “Which it is, overall,” he said. “They might be doing something. But it’s not enough.”
But Dad’s angle depended on whom he was speaking to. Standing on the lawn after a Tuli Block Farmers’ Association meeting, I once heard
him tell a very different tale. The subject was the escalating problem of staff taking off too much time for funerals. It continued the theme discussed in the meeting, of wages being too high.
“Half of my guys have it,” someone complained.
“Well, you know what these people are like with sex. Anyone. Anytime.”
Nodding heads.
“And the government does nothing.”
“Typical Africans. Let their own people die.”
This time, not everyone nodded. Now some people in the gathering looked uncertain. But there were still many nods and mumbles of assent.
Dad’s face had gone blank with anger. The only time I’d seen him angrier was when a white doctor we met said, “AIDS was sent by God to deal with black overpopulation.” Then Dad had just walked away without a word. This time he stayed, glaring at the gathering with a look that made me scared on their behalf.
“This government is doing a hell of a lot,” he said, coldly and slowly. “A hell of a lot more than many other governments. I should know. And they are dealing with a complex problem rooted in economic, geographical, cultural, and social issues. Any government in the world would struggle to cope.”
Dad paused, letting his words sink in. Taken aback, no one spoke. I flushed with pride. Mum raised her eyebrows slightly, her eyes sparkling. Usually she just looked exhausted when Dad climbed on his soapbox.
“This is a disease affected by all kinds of factors,” Dad continued to his angry and sheepish audience. “And there are all kinds of beliefs involved. I don’t fully understand it yet. And I’m a doctor running what is virtually an AIDS practice. There is ignorance. Of course. But there’s ignorance everywhere. It’s ignorant just to blame the government or just to blame promiscuity.” He eyed the offending speakers. “It’s bloody disgraceful,” he concluded furiously.
