My name is Nakungu Reginah, I am 32 years old, and I have two childeren, age 15 and 12. I was tested positive seven months ago. Mu children have not been tested yet. But my husband died of Aids in 2005.
I am living in my mother’s house that I share with her 3 children, my cousin Sandra and my grandmother. Sandra’s parents are divorced and they have dropped her here when she was sick, to let us take care of her. Sandra is four years old and also tested positive. She does not goes to school at this point. I do have relatives living in the area, but they discriminate me, so I am not able to relay on them if neccesairy. Even though they talk to me, they are treating me differently ever since I disclosed. I just wish that people stopped stigmatizing. In the future I actually would like to have more children. I never applied family planning, but I would want to give it a shot.
I do not have a profession at this time, but I would like to set up a business in order to trade in clothing or use this plot of land to rear chickens. In order to do so, I would have to take a loan of 500,000. I already have a loan of 200,000 to pay for the school fees of my children. The school fees are about 130,000 a term. The interest is 40,000 and I have to return the bank 6,000 a week. Since I have taken this loan 10 months ago, I just have two months left to finish it. As you will understand that my most emergent problem consists of school fees and income generation.
I am taking ARV’s since January, but in the beginning I was quite afraid of ART. I feared of going to the Hospital and taking tablets for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I have grown used to it. Every time I take the tablets, I am being confronted with side effects, such as skin rash and oral wounds. I do not have any other health issues and I have not interrupted my treatment yet. The reason that I went for a test is because I was very ill. I turned out to be positive with a CD-count of just 29. Now, last week, we took our grandmother in for a regular control. We didn´’t know that they had also tested on HIV. When I collected the results, I couldn ‘t help opening the envelop and I discovered that my grandmother was also infected. That was such a shock to me that I didn´’t have the guts to tell her, until yesterday. She was shocked.
