Another couple based in Limpopo has been reportedly caught red handed eating the ‘forbbiden fruit’ in the bush around 2pm earlier today.
The couple whose names cannot be published for ethical reasons has apologized to all those who know them,including the friends and relatives.
At 13, Sakhile* is fairly typical for his age.He likes football and accounting, and laughs easily with his siblings - even as he smiles shyly in the company of adults. Every day after school, he does his homework, washes the dishes and cleans his uniform.
At exactly 8pm, just as Generations starts up on SABC 1, he fetches a glass of water and a large, pinkish tablet and takes them to his mother, Zanele*.
He's coy about what the tablets are for, but he knows. He started asking questions a few years ago when the Amagugu counsellors began visiting the family homestead. Now he's also learnt about HIV in school. He knows you can contract it by having sex without a condom and he knows that you can get it from an open wound. That's how his mom said she got it when he asked. She said she wasn't wearing any gloves.
When she's ill, he and his five older siblings cook her porridge and fetch her water.
"It helps me to know that she has HIV," he says quietly. "When she passes away, we must know what killed her, what she was suffering from."
Sitting next to him on a grass mat on the floor, her twin granddaughters clambering across her lap and five more shrieking loudly in a game of catch outside, Zanele, 51, is fiercely protective of her family unit.
She doesn't like this community. When the Amagugu counsellors first came to visit her, the whispers among her neighbours left her feeling ostracised. "Bad people," she calls them.
But she credits the programme with helping her to learn to let it go.
"I don't care what people say, as long I'm here with my family. We're strong. Our problems are our problems. Everything stays here."
"A lot of moms do still worry about the stigma. We can't be naive about that," says Rochat.
Just who a child might tell about a parent's HIV status was a concern that came up again and again.
To combat it, the Amagugu team introduced a disclosure "safety hand" - a contract between the mother and the child about who it was safe to speak to about her status.
Then they began to notice a change in the children's behaviour.
"They didn't want to talk to us anymore," recalls counsellor Samukelisiwe Dube. "We asked ourselves what had happened, why they didn't want to talk. Then we realised it was the safety hand."
The children were sticking to the agreed list of names - and the counsellors' names weren't on it.
"After that we had to ask the mothers to make sure that we are also included," says Dube.
When the findings from the Amagugu intervention were published in the medical journal The Lancet in August, they showed a significant increase in disclosure.
Nearly 90% of the 235 mothers taking part in the training revealed their status to their children. Among mothers who were not part of the programme, only 56% could say the same
The researchers noted improvements in both the mothers' and their children's mental health, better adherence to treatment programmes, and an overall decrease in parenting stress. The Amagugu mothers were also 27 times more likely to take their children with them on their clinic visits.
"Communication is a positive thing," insists Rochat. "It builds strengths, it builds relationships, and it gives the mother an opportunity to be the hero in her family."
Even then, some mothers still didn't think their children were ready to know.
"For all the training and tools we provide, sometimes there has to be this leap of faith, to just trust that it isn't going to go badly," says Rochat.
When Zanele told her older children about her diagnosis back in 2004, when she was pregnant with Sakhile, she wanted them to know they could always come to her with their issues.
Now, Sakhile's big sister keeps track of Zanele's monthly visits to the clinic and, although the other older children are struggling for work, they always put a little something aside to make sure Zanele has food in her stomach before taking her pill each night.
Telling her family, she says, saved her.
"I'm so proud of my life. As long as I'm with my family, I'm okay."
*Names have been changed
source:all africa
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