We were suddenly thrown into the streets of Nairobi, where promiscuity, love, lust and sex are the order of the day. A young man stirs from a hard night of partying, with no recollection of last night – chained to the bed. He walks to the unfamiliar bathroom, and is greeted with an ARV pamphlet stuck on the mirror to see.
Panicking - memories from last night come flashing back like a blow to the head. He sees her, he sees him, he sees them having sex – he doesn’t see a condom. We are led to believe that this girl he slept with has HIV and because she is his ex girlfriend, she sought him out to deliberately infect him. The poignant emotions of this scene seep through the television screen, and like a guest, HIV sat with us.
While reeling from potential infection, the director takes us to another group of characters, 3 girls, discussing the use of condoms during sex. The one girl is a virgin, while the other 2 are promiscuous. All of them are college students and Ayira catches my attention.
She is a young black woman, with stunning features, a Kenyan Alek Wek – only she is not hungry for the runway but for success. Her desire to succeed in life is fuelled by her father having left their family 6 years ago, and the poverty her mum and sister have since had to endure. She sleeps with a media mogul, in order to land a position in his office, which she does – and she becomes his sex toy. Ayira discovers from the man’s daughter that he could be HIV positive. The knock on effect results in Ayira also having potentially infected her college boyfriend who had asked for her hand in marriage.
Shuga was heart wrenching stuff for a Saturday. In Dubai, rarely are we confronted with HIV. We never dedicate 5 minutes of our time to remember what HIV is or how it is spread. HIV doesn’t even have a face for us. We forget how the simplicity of a night out in town, can lead to reckless endangerment of your life or how someone might love you but not enough to be faithful to one partner.
Virginia is HIV positive and from where we started watching, we don’t know how she got infected. She takes us through the motions of being young and stunning. She is delicious to the eye, yet she is infected. Her father is the old man I mention earlier who was sleeping with Ayira. Her days are spent lounging in a pool, with a sort of melancholy hung over her. She has everything she could ever want, beautiful mansion, clothes pool you name it, yet all that is futile when you know you are living with HIV.
There is no hope for her, or so she thinks. No hope for love, no hope for friendship and in her soft voice, she chides Ayira to be aware of the dangers of sleeping around – her words fell on deaf ears. Her acting prowess is displayed in a scene where she tells Leo, the guy she has a crush on that she is HIV positive. What words can you use to explain this to someone? Do they tumble as they would when you have chicken pox? I think not. Taking a paper, she writes those 4 words ‘I am HIV positive.’
At that point my heart was in my throat, and lying on my boyfriend’s chest I could feel his heartbeat gradually accelerate, his breath heavy. Our silence spoke volumes to each other, and the guest we invited that afternoon, enveloped us, like a wet blanket – HIV is real.
Leo looks at the paper, looks up at her – I expected his face to twist in disgust, but there was nothing. I could not even tell if he was disappointed. For that life time, I too was Virginia, imagining what pain I would endure after confiding such a big secret in someone. The bell cannot be un-rung. Just as he opened his mouth, a friend came with urgency, screaming to Leo they should go, he gets up, and walks away without saying goodbye.
We are left with Virginia, who cowers and shiver slightly while sitted on that bench in the park. In the background everybody goes about their business, but she, in the middle of summer, looking like a shaky leaf in june, shrugs her shoulders in despair. No tears, no words, just a body displaying exhaustion and defeat. Leo suddenly comes back and plants a kiss on her lips, a soft one – an assuring one. That kiss that says, I am here, a kiss that tells Virginia, yes you are beautiful inside too. You can only imagine how I felt.
I recommend you look for it and watch it. Our guest, HIV, may have left after the series but he is ingrained in our memories. My boyfriend and were confronted with a reality that was all too familiar for us – when we were in Africa. I could be Ayira, he could be Skola. Lesson learnt, never take your sexual life foregranted, as you owe it to yourself and to your partner. I just wish more HIV awareness could be done in Dubai.
For now, we thank Shuga, which aired July 2009, and we only discovered it yesterday. Get more info http://ignite.staying-alive.org/kenya/videos
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