For more than a fortnight now, your newspaper has been highlighting the painful controversy in Rivona where seemingly educated parents have been, hurting and traumatizing thirty odd students of an orphanage, some of whom happen to be HIV positive. These parents have been vehemently opposing these kids from studying in the Rivona school where their children go to. Herald condemns this. What is sadder still, the HIV positive children have had to be moved out of Rivona, yet the parents are objecting to the other children from the same orphanage getting admitted to the school, demanding to see their HIV negative reports. Seeing all this, well known lawyer and the founder member of NGO ‘Positive People’, NORMA ALVARES sent us this moving report on how she and her husband looked after Goa’s first HIV positive victim Dominic D’Souza. This is for those parents of Rivona who have shunned those HIV positive children.
It is almost twenty-five years ago that Goa discovered its first HIV-positive victim, young Dominic D’Souza, a Goan youth hailing from Parra village. All hell broke loose and the newspapers went wild with insinuations of how he could have become HIV positive. The medical establishment treated him most shabbily. He was locked away without any explanations in the TB Sanatorium at Mapusa. No doctors would examine him except from afar. They would leave some pills at the door of his room but none would enter. He had to drink water from the toilet tap. The atrocities perpetrated by even people who should have known better were abominable.
Dominic was released after a sustained public campaign. Fortunately, over the years, with numerous AIDS awareness programmes repeatedly conducted in the State through the media, books, TV, etc., Goan society’s attitude towards AIDS victims has considerably changed and there is a far more enlightened approach nowadays, with none of the stigma that was once attached to HIV positive victims.
Or so we thought.
Last week’s protest at a school in Rivona, where parents are protesting the admission of some HIV positive children to the school on the grounds that they would not like their children sitting in the same classrooms as these HIV positive kids, has made me wonder whether we have at all changed in our attitudes and prejudices towards persons in special unfortunate circumstances.
When Dominic was found to be HIV positive, his first casualty was his job. He was instantly sacked. He tried to start a business but as there were no customers, it soon closed. I was asked to assist with handling his legal case and thus had the opportunity to meet him. I imagined him to be a wild, boisterous, beach-cavorting, daredevil – as that was the impression I got from the newspaper stories about him. Instead, I found a gentle, well-mannered, well-educated, young man, with an extremely positive outlook towards life, despite the trauma that life had handed him.
When I asked him if he wanted a job, he promptly said yes, I desperately need something to keep me busy. I didn’t know what to suggest, but soon my husband Claude and I got the idea to employ him ourselves. We were trustees of an NGO which published books, and considering that he was fluent in English, we thought he could edit the manuscripts. He accepted the job gratefully. Our problem now was, where should he work? What if our office staff resigned en masse because we were introducing an HIV positive person (Goa’s first HIV+ person) into the office?
After some thought, we decided that he would work from our home instead. So we set up a computer at home and Dominic started working with us there. Our three sons were quite young at the time, the youngest just a toddler. They were very fond of Dominic and played with him when they got home from school. The youngest would often be found sitting on his lap as he typed at the computer. Our maid offered him tea and snacks daily. He ate from the same plates as we did and drank tea from the same cups. We harboured no fears or worries because there are in fact none to be found from ordinary, basic social contact.
Later, he would go to the office to collect his salary and his charming ways soon won over all the staff. No one ever objected to working with him or sharing office space with him. Once he even organized an overnight picnic for the staff, which was a huge success. After some years when he decided to set up Positive People, an NGO for HIV positive people, we were glad for him.
This article is not about Dominic’s life, which is well documented in text and film. It is written so that the objecting parents of the children at Rivona will re-think their opposition to the admission of the HIV-kindergarten kids.
