Transcript for the Piece Audio version of LiveHopeLove

Live Hope Love: HIV AIDS in Jamaica
Hosted by Kwame Dawes

Billboard
1:00

ANEISHA: When I first found out that I was hiv positive all my dreams and my hope was shattered.

MUSIC: JACKIE MITTOO - DRUM SOUNDS

RUTH JANKE: its wide spread its not just one sector of society its uptown downtown all ages and stages everybody is infected or affected but we don't see it as something we should we really should be looking at much less talking about.

KWAME: Everybody that I talk to is offering an interesting perspective on HIV AIDS in Jamaica

DR. FIGUEROA: A bit over a half of them are not aware that they are living with HIV

KWAME: It's actually a kind of a poem about the way in which people deal with the prospect of death in the context of Jamaican society

ANNOUNCER: "Join Poet Kwame Dawes, on his exploration of HIV AIDS in Jamaica, Coming up next"

CARLA: Live...

KWAME: ...Hope...

ANEISHA: ...Love persons who are HIV positive

PART 1 - Positive Billboard
12:00

POEM: FAITH pt. 1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for
The evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1

MUSIC: KEVIN SIMMONS - INSTRUMENTAL

ANEISHA: When I first found out that I was hiv positive all my dreams and my hope was shattered. I was worried about what was going to become of me, my children, how am I going to tell my mother? The best way is if I kill myself.

POEM: (FAITH pt. 1)
The news comes like a stone falling.
Suddenly all light is gone.
Outside the heat is black as loss.
Tomorrow is a burden.
I speak the words into the air,
no one answers, the sky
is a dull plate of silences.
Tomorrow is a heavy load.
My feet move sluggishly,
every sound muted to a drone.
It is hard to dream these days,
and oh, the tears, the tears.

MUSIC: AUGUSTUS PABLO - MEMORIES OF THE GHETTO

ANEISHA: I didn't really know the difference between HIV and AIDS I just knew that I went over to the clinic and I tested positive for AIDS and I?m going to die now. I asked myself "why me?" Why do I have to be positive?

POEM: FAITH pt. 1 cont.
This treachery of the blood
is a secret rushing through me;
and my face is a mask,
no one must read beyond
its inscrutable dumbness,
no one must know.
I cannot read the faces around me?
everyone seems filled with hope;
how ordinary life must be for them.
What secrets do they carry
in this city of dust, exhaust
and the clamor of engines?
There is no substance
in the things I dream of these days;
the news came like a stone falling
and I can?t find my way back to peace.
This is the antithesis of hope,
the calculus of sudden and terrible news.

ANEISHA: This dreadful disease...a mother is supposed to be there for their children. What is going to become of them now that I am HIV positive?

MUSIC: CHIN'S CALYPSO SEXTET - INSTRUMENTAL MEDLEY NO. 6

KWAME: My name is Kwame Dawes. I'm a poet and a writer. I was born in Ghana and grew up in Jamaica. There are two Jamaicas. There's the Jamaica that the tourists know, that many Americans know, that's the Jamaica of the north coast, of the beaches, the waterfalls, the all-inclusive hotels, the partying...but there's a second Jamaica, that is the Jamaica of the south coast, it is the Jamaica of Kingston, it is the Jamaica in which people live day to day eking out a living, it?s a Jamaica that knows wealth, it also knows poverty, it also knows violence, but it also has a brash smart energy, it is where the music is created in Jamaica, and it is in this Jamaica that I have returned to explore the issue of HIV AIDS.

MUSIC: DON DRUMMOND - AWAY FROM IT ALL

DR. PETER FIGUEROA: Well in Jamaica we have a population of approximately 2.6 million people and we estimate approximately 25,000 persons living with HIV and maybe a bit over a half of them are not aware that they're living with HIV.

RUTH JANKE: I think particularly because Jamaica is such a Christian society and we believe in bible in punishment and what have you sex and sin and death its all tied up you know if you have sex you're going to die and now AIDS has just come to confirm that. It's that link between sex and death that I think feeds into that brimstone and fire psyche that many of us have however deeply hidden it kind of feeds into that; its a punishment.

DR. PETER FIGUEROA: Based on our history and our culture, sex begins at an early age. Multiple sexual partnerships are not unusual.

MUSIC: D-LYNX - DIGGY DONG

KWAME: The the popular perception by some groups outside Jamaica is that Jamaica is known to be a homophobic environment. And that has come largely through a reaction to some of the dj's, this is the dancehall dj's, who in some of their lyrics have really kind of virulent and violent statements about homosexuals and what should be done to homosexuals, and none of it is good.

And it's almost, in the dancehall scene, expected, you have to do your anti-homosexual song, as a kind of rite of passage or as a necessary thing, and they're hugely popular in the dancehall.

ANEISHA: They always say that it was the dirty ones, or the careless ones that live their life reckless. They always say that it?s gay persons get it. I know that I?m not gay, and then I started query, ?is my child?s father gay?? But it could not be. He could not be because he has been in relationships with females that I know about.

MUSIC: DAWN PENN - NO, NO, NO

KWAME: There is no question that this weird contradiction exists that there is a lively gay community in Jamaica. So that's one side of things that fascinated me about trying to understand what is happening there, and trying to communicate to people that it is more nuanced than just saying this is an island where people are just homophobic for you know just the sake of it.

RUTH JANKE: When you talk to people, for them okay maybe its not a gay disease anymore we've kind of gotten over it, kind of if you're a man and have it there's still some questions about your sexuality but we we know there's not just gays who have it. But some people still have an underlying belief no matter how much information you give them that its certain kinds of people you know, you have to be wild and crazy in your sexual behaviors or at least have multiple partners and few people accept that multiple means more than one.

KWAME: 60-70% of the new contractions of HIV/AIDS are with women, which has been true in sub-Saharan Africa, it's been true in places like South Carolina, it's been true in other parts of the Carribean. It's very much now becoming a disease for women who are heterosexual.

STUDENT: They're not using a condom, they don't like it, it itch, them allergic, "aw baby i just want to feel the real you," and girls will get these lines, but that's not sex, you know? That's artificial sex, let's have real sex, skin to skin, and girls will believe this, and they'll have unprotected sex with them simply because they fear losing them.

MUSIC: TONYA STEPHENS - SPILT MILK

KWAME: I knew something of Aneisha's story before I met Aneisha. And what I knew of her story is that she was the poster child for HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. And for surviving it and for living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Well that puzzled me and it made me think what would make a girl, a woman, in Jamaica in 2007 take the chance of going up front and admitting to the whole world that she's HIV positive. I knew initially that there must have been an element of bravery there.

ANEISHA: I knew that I was in one faithful relationship with my child?s father. I wasn?t the girl that was running around, and I knew that he was the one who gave it to me.

KWAME: And she was first diagnosed with HIV, having discovered that she was HIV positive from somebody who was at the funeral of her then live-in boyfriend. A man who was about 47 years old when he died. And he had been murdered. And the rumor was that he had been murdered because he had given HIV to the sister of the man who actually killed him, and this was a revenge killing.

ANEISHA: My child?s father was killed. Some persons says that he infected someone, and their family decided to retaliate. But it?s only he, and that person can know the real truth of what happened. I never really query into it much. I just know that I have this thing and my whole life and all my dreams have been shattered. Now I have to make a right about change, I have to try to turn around my life.

KWAME: Aneisha's story I found to be a series of ups and downs, moments when you thought things could change in an inexorable march towards tragedy that often affects poor people who live in Jamaica. At one moment she grows up abused, sexually abused from age 7 until she's about 11 or 12, by her stepfather. And then she's rescued from that and taken to Ghana, West Africa where it looks like she's going to do something fantastic with her life, she goes to Achimoto school , the most prestigious high school in Ghana and she comes back to Jamaica, and falls into a relationship with a man who is three times her age, and he gives her HIV. And through that journey with HIV she comes back into this world where she's a well known person, her face is on billboards. And she has a message to give.

KWAME: You say you love dancing, do you still go dancing?

ANEISHA: Sometimes my mother and uncle say, ?girl, what are you doing??
But I say, I want to dance, and there is going to be a time when I won?t be able to dance any more. And I will dance...

POEM: DANCE FOR ANEESHA
Beenie Man in a white fedora
is legs all legs as he steps
like a king across the stage,
head held back, fist to mouth,
scatter-shot lyrics, gruff
as any bedroom-bully, and a girl
can forget her worries,
can blank out the belly?s
groaning; can feel like
a girl child again, not no
baby mother thrice over
with no answers for tomorrow,
can silence the whisper
of the disease in her blood,
hold down her waistline,
and dance away the gloom,
Lord, dance inside the boom
of the sound system, dance
with this long, magga
black man, in his white
tux commanding all
and sundry to grind
their waistline, and what else
to do but dance, baby,
sweat it out, find back
the sweet spot in the waist-
line, where it is watery
and gummy; feel clean again,
feel fresh again, feel
rude again; while the city
shimmers with its
million souls trying
to make all sorrow
fade away, sweet Lord.

Break KINGSTON, MUSIC BY KEVIN SIMMONS

PART 2 - Living with HIV

Announcer: You're listening to Livehopelove
19:00

MUSIC: LINTON KWESI JOHNSON - REALITY DUB

ANEISHA: Sometimes I just sit down and I cry. Cause I know, they don't...what they're expecting of me. I have to live up, I have to live up to it. Everybody's going to look at the life that I live, if you're going to practice what you preach.

KWAME:Aneisha had to step down from the position of being this media figure, because she had gotten pregnant while she was going around doing work, talking about abstinence and so on.

ANEISHA: I was in a relationship, the person was also HIV positive like me, somehow when I tell them that the condom burst they does not buy it, they believe that I was practicing unprotected sex. So at one point my job was in jeopardy because they was like saying that well you're out there on this whole thing and the tagline was like 'I use a condom every time,' and I was trying to let them know that the tagline says 'getting on with life.' So I was like, I know I have done my wrong and I know I have made my mistake, and everybody make mistakes in life, nobody's perfect.

KWAME: There seemed to be a double-standard about the expectations of her. And the double standard was that she was trying to live her life and she had taken all the precautions but she had gotten pregnant. But she wondered whether others would be treated the same way as she was that is a woman who was married, who was living in HIV and working in this area, would have been treated the same way as she was if they had found out that this woman had gotten pregnant and in a sense I think I think she has a point there.

ANEISHA: I was hurt, because I knew my job was in jeopardy. That was when they decided to take me out of the school because at the time, I was preaching abstinence to young people. And I look back at myself and I said 'yes I'm preaching abstinence to young people.' That does not say that I can't get on with my life. My partner and I made a decision to keep the child.

POEM: MAKING ENDS MEET
She sells box juice every day
down by the terminus in Spanish
Town, to make ends meet, get
a little something for school
lunch and bus fare for her
big daughter whose body
is fine like hers, skinny
like breeze would blow her away;
tall hair, high bottom, nice
shape. Sometimes it come
in like they are sisters
when they step their way
through the muddy pothole
and marl lanes of Portmore?s
blighted streets, and same way,
the men are always asking
for a double mint slam
with two schoolers; and she
knows how to smile, kiss
her teeth and drag her big
daughter along. The girl
now wearing same short
frock and halter top
her mother wears, and mother
know it?s a matter of time
before she start show belly,
though she warn her daily,
but girl is girl, and this Jamaica
is a rough place with man
who will lay wait you,
sweet talk you, offer you
bus fare and food money
each day, and sometimes
he might buy you a nice
shoes; just a matter of time;
and what her mother
who hustling a two cents
selling box juice and icy mint
down by the terminus
in her fade out denim skirt
and broken down clog shoes
with the fabric mangy
to nothing where her tough
heel must rub every time
she step, can offer to this girl
who start to smell herself,
start to want things?
Fifty dollars for a bag of ice,
the rest is the heat and dust
of the city to make people
thirsty, make them buy.
Ever since she test positive,
nothing won?t go right
for her, it come in like
a curse to blight her day?
big woman like this
depend on her mother
for clothes money
for some dollars to buy
pads and panty, what a life.
Man is like death to her;
man just take and take,
and all them leave is trouble,
man is like the grave to her,
she see them coming and run,
man is like a curse on her,
with sweet mouth and lies.
And all she have is her box juice
her fifty-dollar ice,
some icy mint and a smile,
just to make ends meet
day by blessed day.
MUSIC: BUJU BANTON - DESTINY

WINSOME KEANE-DAWES: And we started with about two persons and then 3 and then we gradually build on that. And just by having them be in a room, where they can exhale and be themselves, they don;'t have to hide and be fearful. And just by having them coming twice a month, and meeting, sharing their experiences, they realize that 'hey, I'm not alone in this thing, there's so many of us.'

WINSOME KEANE-DAWES: Can I just add, that I find that persons that have family support do much much better. And sometimes HIV+ person tend to underestimate their relatives, there are people who feel they can't tell relatives, we need to build up the courage to tell them.

WINSOME KEANE-DAWES: The greatest challenge that I have is the individual persons acknowledging their risk. It's not just HIV, any STI, get them to acknowledge their risk, take responsibility. It must be human nature to keep blaming other people for our problems.

SUPPORT GROUP WOMAN: I'm not saying it's my fault, I'm not saying it's the other person's fault. Because I'm supposed to take responsiblity for myself, so it's both of us. If I was protecting myself, I wouldn't end up with it. So I can't put all the blame on him.

KWAME: I've been coming to Jamaica very regularly, ever since I left. You engage the country you engage people, I've met many people who I remain convinced are courageous. I've also met people who have reminded me about the resilience of Jamaicans to survive, and to struggle to survive in difficult times. I've met people who have used what is their sickness to create something useful for themselves.

MUSIC: LASCELLES' SONG

RUTH: I have known people who have died you know and it is a it is a loss it is a loss particularly when its young people but I have seen people live I?ve seen people live I?ve seen people come back from deaths door you know amazingly absolutely amazingly I mean its really is a tribute to the individual spirit yes medication yes all these other things have their place but also its really a tribute to when you see people living with HIV.

KWAME: So HIV AIDS has had this really weird place in the imagination. Both one of one of horror, a sense that this becomes a kind of irrevocable sentence to you. And yet one of hope where we get instances of people that manage to live with this disease and so on. My questions are about how people have dealt with it and lived with it as well. You know there are people who I grew up with in Jamaica you know have died of HIV/AIDS and it was never said that that was the disease that killed them in public. So I know that there was a kind of veil, a shroud of secrecy about it, and some kind of shame about it. So I'm asking questions about issues that I don't think are entirely public. But I'm also discovering that there's a public face to HIV/AIDS.

MUSIC: ERNEST RANGLIN - SURFIN'

RUTH JANKE: The face that is presented of HIV is usually of the poor. The poor and the uneducated. So that perpetuates this myth that they're the people who have it. It's concentrated in that area. But it's a challenge that we have, which is why we have to give special recognition to people like Rosie Stone for coming out, for being willing to come out and say listen, when woman, middle-class professional woman look and see her, they see themselves, and it's bringing it home to you that it could be you.

ROSIE STONE: They have this dare to care children's home in Spanish town, where there were some HIV+ children who are there. I had read to a little boy who was HIV+. It was very very rewarding personally for me, because I showed them the book, I read a little part of it, I told them that I was HIV+, and that iI got it from my husband, and what have you. and the children's story, that I read to them and we talked about the story and what have you. But afterwards, after the session was finished and the people at the children's home were taking me around to show me where they lived and so on all of that. I heard a little talking in the corner, and one little boy was saying, Yes she has the same thing like me, she has the same thing, and he said, no no, look how she look, she couldn't have the same thing, and the one was saying to the other one, Ask her ask her, and I say yes man you can ask me anything. And when I called I said yes you can come and I show you the book. And he said miss, you don't have the same thing like that, and I said yes I do! and he said i don't believe you, i said well come and look, and i showed him the book and i told them and what have you. he was so... and the little boy know that was in the session, same thing I tell you! she has the same thing like me. And for me, that was enough, I said to myself, if i can help one person, and one little person to feel a little better about being ill with HIV and that's all the agony and the self doubt and all the things that went into the book, it would have been worthwhile.

KWAME: We spoke to Rosie Stone, whose book I had been reading. She's from a middle class, prominent family. And her husband, who died of HIV AIDS, Carl Stone, was a massive figure in Jamaica until today. Rosie Stone is tested and she has contracted the disease a week after he has been tested.

ROSIE STONE: At that time I forgive Carl immediately In the book I say he ask me about wearing my wedding band. Why I'm not wearing it and that began the conversation. So I said you shouldn't speak about wedding bands. We have a crisis on our hands and I don't know what I what to think. And I told him I needed some honesty from him in order for me to rationalize in my mind that I need to stay in this house in this marriage. And I told him that over the years I had thought about different women but of course didn't think it was really true but now that there's a diagnosis of HIV I have to wonder. So I was going to ask him to I was going to call the names of the women and he would say yes or no to it and then I was crying so much and he was too. I did it and I called marry and he said yes/no whatever and we went through it. And then afterwards I don't know if you know about pain that is like physical pain when someone says yes yes its like someone who punch you punch you in the heart and so after that I went to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and I turned on the shower and sit in there and just cried and cried and howled and everything and then after that was probably took about 20 minutes or so and after that when I came out I really felt cleansed in my mind of the whole horror of infidelity. And so I just that?s when I decided that I was going to I forgave him, so after that I could look after him. I suppose if I didn't have a sense of self of who I was apart from my marriage apart from Carl it could kill me. You definitely need it. At the time I didn't realize that that was probably why I survived because if I was totally wrapped up or defined myself by my marriage then I wouldn't have a self.

ROSIE STONE: I married Carl because I was passionately in love with him. I don't know how many friends and family understand that. I have had a fulfilling life with him even though he has been a difficult man to live with. I have always understood him and that has made life with him satisfying and comfortable despite my ranting and raving. That?s the part that, that's the first time I?ve been able to read it.

POEM: UNFORGIVENESS
1
Nothing like the surety of death
to make a skinny short man?s
open hand seem like dust, an empty
weight on the skin. Look at him,
gabardine suit flopping about
his scrawny legs, loose shirttail
hanging, and the pride of chains,
rings, chaparitas. He is dying, too.
The same treachery in her blood
makes him as ordinary as dirt.

2
One year now since she gave up
the stone in her belly,
swelling into grotesquery,
a universe of errors. One year
now, since the gurgle and greed
of his mouth pulling at anything
suckable. One year now, since
the confession that his fainting,
his vomiting, his skin curdling
is AIDS in his skin. One year now
since she heard the news
of the end of her life?and now
no one speaks, no one has words
to offer her, no one can console.

3
Look at this short man,
ruler of his kingdom of worms,
reduced to this preening graveyard,
a man hustling some change
so he can eat from day to day,
a man who will sit and stare
into the sky, his eyes empty
of meaning, a man pleading
for her mercy while she eats
her own meal in front of him;
a puppy begging for a morsel,
but she hisses her teeth,
leaves him sniveling,
it is easy to be cold like this.

4
So this is the equation of death?
she fears nothing, she laughs at his
vanishing body rising with violence
and she watches as he crumbles
to tearful nothing?at least once
the fear was part of the sweetness,
the assurance that something firm
was anchoring her; this is the way
death simplifies things; death will take
us all, she knows this all too well,
and her single prayer is to be there
to see him ask for his last sip
of water, to be able to take the glass
brimming with white light,
and let it spill like libation
into the earth before his bewildered eyes.
Break KINGSTON, MUSIC BY KEVIN SIMMONS

PART 3 - HOPE AND DYING
Announcer; You're listening to LiveHopeLove with Kwame Dawes
19:00

MUSIC: AUGUSTUS PABLO - UP WARRIKA HILL

KWAME: This trip has been especially about the way in which the disease affects lives, how people cope with that disease and it's actually a kind of poem about the way in which people deal with the prospect of death in the context of Jamaican society. Because it's a society that encounters death at high levels, people are constantly negotiating the idea of what it means to be here and not here tomorrow.

POEM: COFFEE BREAK
It was Christmas time,
the balloons needed blowing,
and so in the evening
we sat together to blow
balloons and tell jokes?
the cool air off the hills
made me think of coffee,
so I said, ?Coffee would be nice,?
and he said, ?Yes coffee
would be nice,? and smiled
as his thin fingers pulled
the balloons from the plastic bags;
so I went for coffee
and it takes a few minutes
to make the coffee
though I did not know
if he wanted cow?s milk
or condensed milk,
and when I came out
to ask him, he was gone,
just like that, in the time
it took me to think,
cow?s milk or condensed;
the balloons sat lightly
on his still lap.

MUSIC: BARRINGTON LEVY - VICE VERSE LOVE
KWAME: Montego Bay is a bustling congested city which looks like a country town but it's massive and its population is second only to Kingston so the streets are extremely narrow the houses are close to the street people live literally on the street so you're negotiating people it has a maze of one way traffic, you see school kids jumping into taxis and so on. It's an energetic town. And we drove through the town and up into the hills to the Hope Hospice which was created to serve primarily people who were HIV/AIDS at least some of them are at the last stages of the disease and finding ways to cope and so on.
POEM: (HOPE'S HOSPICE, for John Marzouca)
These days, the language of death
is a dialect of betrayals; the bodies
broken, placid as saints, hobble
along the tiled corridors, from room
to room. Below the dormitories
is a white squat bungalow, a chapel
from which the handclaps and choruses
rise and reach us like the scent
of a more innocent time. I am
trying to listen to the plump
Palestinian man with his swaying
rural middle-class patois,

JOHN MARZOUCA: when when people get to this stage of accepting, I don't know it was just, you'd walk into the place and not know it was a hospice because there were laughing.

POEM: HOPE'S HOSPICE cont.
this jovial
servant, his eyes watering at the memory
of an eleven year old girl brought
to die inside the white walls
and cheap fabric of this place;
her small body fading, her eyes
fiercely flaming with light, with hunger
for wide open spaces?decades
of discovery. Her mind is still
unable to calculate the treachery
of rape, to grasp how a man
can seek revenge on her tender body;
why as he wept when they took him
away, she wept, too, like the day
she wept when they took her mother?s
body away, the disease
leaving her with nothing but bones,
thin skin, the scent of chickens.

JOHN MARZOUCA: she had a level of acceptance that I'd never seen in an eleven year old. So she knew she was dying. But everybody else was grieving for her but she was so happy. And she kept saying that she wanted to die on Christmas day and she did. She passed on Christmas day.

POEM: (HOPE'S HOSPICE cont.)
There is refuge, I know, in distraction,
the chapel of charms down the hill,
the pure sound of my youth,
when cleansed by the perpetual blood
my sins were never legion enough
for despair; when the comfort
of the Holy Spirit was green as this
sloping escarpment, thick with trees,
cool against the soft sunlight;
these things she saw before her body
could not cope anymore; her laughter,
her laughter.

JOHN MARZOUCA: there were times when you go to church and you try and do what is right but it finally catch up, you know so all those things in the long run when they happen it might hurt but they're really a blessing to they're lessons and all of that for all of us, you know?

POEM: HOPE'S HOSPICE cont.
The plump man brushes
the gleam of tears from his cheeks.
I think of the simple equations
of compassion; I think of songs,
the accordion, the strained
harmonies, the bodies of the dying
shuffling past, eyes still hoping;
the van waiting in the shade
to take me from all of this;
the long ride through rain and dark
to Kingston, to sleep and more sleep.
MUSIC: LASCELLE SINGS PLUS WINSOME
JOHN MARZOUCA: I'm John Marzouca, co-administrator of the hospice. Our patients come to us from the hospital. The police will bring people in or relatives, people who live in a community and know someone who somebody who is ill will refer them to us. In the beginning people just came here to die because their medication wasn't really effective. We have had probably over 500 patients pass through here since 1997. In the beginning as much as a dozen people would die each week.
JOHN MARZOUCA: Even in the days when there was a lot of suffering and death there was alot of laughter also. There's a young man I always remember his name was Noel. And it was near the end. And very emaciated. Couldn't eat anything. And he loved mangoes, and of course something like mangoes gave him the runs. And we had gotten somebody brought us a whole lot of mango. We gave them out to others but we didn give them to Noel. But he stayed in his rom and he could smell the mangoes. In the patois he said you have mango out there? I said yes but you know He said eh eh eh. Bring the mango. Because if I eat it I'm going to die, and if I don't eat it I'm going to die. So bring the mangoes. So we bring the mangoes and you know you deal with it afterward. You know alot of little things. You know brought alot of laughter and humor to the home which sometimes people couldn't understand, you know? They couldn't understand.
JOHN MARZOUCA: one of the things that really sustain me too is that you cannot just read your bible and then go home. You have to do something. You have to live it.

POEM: CLEANING
After a while, you don?t bother
with the brief and the pajamas;
you leave him on the sheet,
make him shit himself, then
shift over to the other side
until you can come, lift up
the body, wipe his bottom
with a soft cotton cloth, bundle
up the sheet with two more
in the corner, straighten
out the plastic over the mattress?
sometimes you have to wipe
it, too, then put a towel
under him until the other
sheet dry, and all the time,
you don?t say a word,
you don?t ask for nothing.
You let your hand brush
against your father?s back
and pray his dignity will last
another day. This is how
a man must care for his father;
quiet, casual, and steady.
MUSIC: TOMMY MCCOOK & THE AGGRAVATORS - A VERSION I CAN FEEL WITH LOVE
KWAME: I think people have have especially the workers have been relieved of that burden that mourning sense of the constant loss because they see people recovering and they see people surviving and living their lives. So there's a hope that is tempered by the knowledge that it's only a partial hope.

RUTH JANKE: when you look at where we're coming from I think that we have been really blessed. When you look at what other country's statistics have been like, from day one Jamaica has been making an effot to control and contain the spread of HIV. And I think that has been a major factor. Barbados Trinidad Bahamas all of them were higher than us because we have been out there fighting we have all the social problems we have all the poverty we have all the things that should be pushing it up and yet we have managed to control it.
DR. PETER FIGUEROA: Now I'd say we've made tremendous progress. We've been able to put 3500 people in treatment. We have noticed in the last five years that the death rate has declined. So we know persons living with AIDS who are on treatment having a much more healthy productive life and living longer. We've been able to reduce transmission from mother to child, previously before we had the drugs one in four children born to a woman who was HIV infected would in turn be infected. Now we've reduced that to less than 10% and we're trying to get it below 5 %.
WINSOME KEANE-DAWES: The Antiretroviral treatment or medication has given HIV+ persons such great hope, beyond the imagination because usually when they are diagnosed with HIV, it is considered a death sentence. In fact I think some of them for the first time are really concentrating on their selves, really taking care of themselves. And seeing some of them have really bloomed and blossomed, beyond to a higher level than they were before HIV.
DR. PETER FIGUEROA: Much fewer children are dying from HIV so there has been progress there, we've been able to change sexual behaviour to a great extent, stigma has reduced as well, but we still have tremendous challenge to ensure that the stigma is removed entirely people are more comfortable disclosing their status and also that we really reach especially vulnerable groups and ensure that they are practicing safe sex so we still have alot of work to do.
MUSIC: TONYA STEPHENS - THESE STREETS
ANEISHA: The reason my I stopped taking the medication I am tired of taking alot of pill. I feel that I can do it on my own without the tablets and sometime the tablets they taste very bad. You just tire of knowing that you have to take this tablet every day, every day around the clock, and it give you lots of side affects side affects sometimes you feel alot of pain in your chest. Sometimes a pain in your side. Sometimes you have to be going and they are checking for kidney problem, heart problem all the things like that and I don't want to be tested tested all the time.
ANEISHA: That means I try as much as possible to eat right. If I feel sick I go to the doctor, but I'll know I won't be getting ARV, I'll be getting antibiotic.
KWAME: There are lots of discussions about the advantages of having the medication and all that kind of thing but I think people underestimate how difficult life is even with the medication. And how painful it can be with the medication.
ANEISHA: those who are on medication you have to tell them that you have to take the medication on time and you have to give them the lowdown: If you don't take your medication your body won't be able to fight off the infection. But you who are in the shoes of HIV, they don't know what I am going through, taking the tablets. They just can tell it that to take it, to take it, but they don't know.
ANEISHA: Bad days is like sometimes you are very sick. Sometimes you feel that you're tired of the discrimination. You're trying to fight it one way and it's out there another way. This is one of the bad days.

POEM: NICHOL/MUSIC BY KEVIN SIMMONS
How coolly it's broken you,
trying to mask the knowing
wit behind your eyes?

every smile, brilliant
against your gleaming
black skin, is defiance.

You stammer, push out
words; tell your story;
slap your knees to show

where your stroke-frozen
body would crawl
across the concrete

to reach the yard,
with the gawking
on-lookers. You laugh.

?Man must live.
Man must live.?
How casually broken.

Tall lanky man,
hands clawed, yams
dangling, and the sweet

club man?s charm
in your grin, still?all those
women slain by your art.

You stretch out your legs,
tell your story slow,
persistent as the crawl

you made towards sunlight,
the way you pulled
your body upright,

the way you made tender
the toughness of hard men
who would soon wash you,

feed you with oily fingers
full of mashed ackee
and tomatoes, who have

held you against
the night, men, tough
as teeth, hard men.

?Man must live.
Man must live.?
The virus prances through your blood
manages to tickle, make you laugh at a new sunny day and yours is the posture of survival.

ANEISHA: I do want to become somebody in life. I do have my dreams. I'm not just going to let HIV shatter it for me.
MUSIC: DAMIAN MARLEY - STAND A CHANCE
CREDITS:
Major Underwriting for Live Hope Love was provided by the Pulitzer Center or Crisis Reporting, MAC AIDS Fund and PRX, The Public Radio Exchange.

This program was produced by Stephanie Guyer-Stevens and Jack Chance for Outer Voices

featuring the poetry of Kwame Dawes and ORIGINAL INTERVIEWS drawn from the multimedia reporting project Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica, produced by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Poetry and narration by Kwame Dawes

Original Music composed by Kevin Simmonds

Sound Recordists were Nathalie Applewhite, Stephen Sapienza and Doug Gritzmacher

Mixing Engineer was Jack Chance.

Special thanks to Aneisha Taylor, Dr. Peter Figueroa, Rosemary Stone, John Marzouca, Ruth Jankee, Carla Legister, Lascelles Graham, Winsome Keane-Dawes Gianluca Tramontana, and Sandra Goldburn.

For more information on LiveHopeLove, please visit livehopelove.com
To obtain a copy of a cd of this program, call Outer Voices, at (415)497-0563. Or e-mail us at info@outervoices.org.
-----FIN-----

MUSIC CREDITS:

Billboard
Jackie Mittoo
Drum Song
from Champion in the Arena 1976-1977
# Label: Blood & Fire Records
# ASIN: B00008XUTP

Promo
Augustus Pablo
Thunder Clap
from Original Rockers
# Label: Greensleeves
# ASIN: B00005BJCW

Part 1
Augustus Pablo
Memories of the Ghetto
from East of the River Nile
# Label: Shanachie
# ASIN: B000066RMY

Chin's Calypso Sextet
Instrumental Medley No. 6
From Chin's Calypso Vol. 7

Don Drummond
A Way From It All
from Skatalites & Friends at Randy's
# Label: Vp Records
# ASIN: B000001TN6

D-Lynx
Diggy Dong
from Dancehall Reggae Deluxe Extra: Vol.3
# Label: Pony Canyon
# ASIN: B000JVS534

Dawn Penn
No, No, No
from Studio One Rockers
# Label: Soul Jazz
# ASIN: B000050XFU

Tonya Stephens
Spilt Milk
from Rebelution
# Label: Vp Records
# ASIN: B000G73SLA

Part 2
Linton Kwesi Jonston
Reality Dub
from LKJ in Dub vol. 1
# Label: Island UK
# ASIN: B0000262IN

Buju Banton
Destiny
from Inna Heights
# Label: Penthouse Records
# ASIN: B000001TQC

Ernest Ranglin
Surfin'
from Studio One Rockers
# Label: Soul Jazz
# ASIN: B000050XFU

Part 3
Augustus Pablo
Up Warrika Hill
from Original Rockers
# Label: Greensleeves
# ASIN: B00005BJCW

Barrington Levy
Vice Vere Love
from Too Experienced: The Best of Barrington Levy
# Label: Vp Records
# ASIN: B00000E9KP

Tommy McCook & The Aggrovators
A Version I Can Feel with Love
# Label: Charly Records
# ASIN: B000S54ZFI

Tonya Stephens
These Streets
from Rebelution
# Label: Vp Records
# ASIN: B000G73SLA

Damien Marley
Stand a Chance
from Halfway Tree
# Label: Motown
# ASIN: B00005NWKI

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