World Aids Day at the Wellness Centre

It was (a belated) Worlds' Aids Day at the Wellness Centre yesterday, with speakers and presentations and testimonies from the audience. I walked in to see the Senior's Club sitting in the front row, they take these things seriously. Ma'Regina was the first to offer her thoughts on the role of the elderly in the changing social landscape that Aids has moulded in our country. Tabby walked over to where I stood leaning against the information shelves with her "follow me" expression. So I followed her into the kitchen where she pulled out an apricot from her apron.

"I took it from the display," she said. To the far left of the speakers table was a display of healthy foods, it was always one of my favourite jobs for the centre's health days, doing the display. 

"Tabs!" I reprimanded her, giggling, "you can't take it away!"

"No look," she rolls the apricot over in her hand and shows me its bruised underside, "it isn't a good one anyway."

"Fair enough." I agree. 

In the kitchen, Ma'MP and Ma'Sophe are making chicken and spinach, Tabby asks me to set out plates. 

"So is Lulama still in Norway?" I ask as I stack out the green and yellow enamel plates.

"No she's back, but she had a good conference. She was the only one from South Africa there!"

"Shoh that's a lot of pressure."

Tabs nods in agreement, "but you know her, she won't be intimidated."

She won't. She's fearless. Fearless and so full of grace really. When she's around, the world just works. 

We get distracted talking about the conference, and everything Lulama said about it. But then, 

"No but hang on, if she's not in Norway, then where is she?"

"Oh yes, she's on leave today. Her son went to the bush last week on Wednesday, and so her and her family have been making umqombothi and making the arrangements for the food and the sheep."

"What? No man Tabs, her son is only 13!"

"Ha-uh, this is the son she inherited. He's 18."

"Ooh, right, ok."

Tabby goes on to explain as much of the bush process as she can to me, but since she's not a man, there's not much she can tell me. "It takes shorter these days, it used to be six months, now it's just a few weeks." I ask her what else has changed.

"Before they go, the boys go to the clinic now for a check-up and to be tested to make sure they're not HIV."

A disproportionate number of my students want to come to South Africa to learn about HIV, to see what an "infectious disease" looks like. I sometimes lose my patience with them. Grannies rethinking their retirement, orphans adopted or inherited, a new tradition added to an old one; HIV and Aids looks like people living their lives. Different lives yes, and living their lives sometimes with incredible loss and pain, but living. And while Aids has sculptured South Africa's already transitional terrain in dramatic and sometimes difficult to comprehend ways, it doesn't define us. 

"I went to Cape Town on Sunday," Tabby starts a new story.

"Oh ya, for the Christmas lights, how was it?" 

"Mm, it was great, we only left late. But next time I'm taking a camping chair and really settling in." 

I laugh, "seriously Tabs, a camping chair?"

"Ewe sisi, why not?"