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The
Network of Women Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS (REFIAGUI)
was launched during a workshop from November 3 -
5, 2004 in Conakry organized by the Executive Secretariat of the
National Committee against AIDS (CNLS) in collaboration
with the European Union, UNAIDS and the Mama Henriette Conté
Foundation.
MARWOPNET is one of ten founding members of this network, which
aims to mobilize women in the fight against HIV/AIDS. The network’s
members include: NGOs for people living with HIV/AIDS; the National
Women Lawyers’ Association; NGOs engaged in the fight against
the spread of HIV/AIDS; the Ministry for Social, Women’s and
Children’s Affairs; and the Mama Henriette Conté Foundation.
REFIAGUI’s objectives are to:
- mobilize women infected and affected by HIV/AIDS;
- reinforce assistance for HIV/AIDS patients;
- conduct public awareness campaigns;
- facilitate experience sharing;
- set up a network of women living with HIV/AIDS;
- advocate for women living with HIV/AIDS;
- facilitate access to research, employment and other opportunities
for HIV/AIDS patients; and
- reinforce patients’ capacities through training and literacy
campaigns
Although the Network is devoted to assisting those already infected
by HIV, the organization will also fight the spread of AIDS in Guinea,
where the rate of seroprevalence practically doubled from 1.5% in
1996 to 2.8 in 2001.
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Bernadette
Kwegera, president of the Ikambéré Association,
a welcoming house for HIV-positive immigrant women in France, was
invited by the workshop’s steering committee to share her experiences
with the Guinean network. She describes the inexpressible suffering
of these women and their lack of listening and meeting places:
"Their exclusion follows a certain process. When women who
reveal their diseases to their loved ones, they often react by excluding
and rejecting them. In Africa and communities of sub-Saharan origin
abroad, an HIV-infected woman is often considered to be an easy
woman."
Bernadette, however, explains that even if stereotypes are starting
to change because of the many families touched by the disease, for
many others, a girl with AIDS is one who was not “serious.”
Thus women with AIDS can be excluded from their communities based
on dramatizations of the means by which the virus in contracted.
Bernadette notes that much remains to be done in terms of erasing
the stigma attached to the disease.
"But there is also a phenomenon of self-exclusion, of internalizing
the stigma, sometimes even before announcing their illness to their
families. Having learned of their seropositivity, women insulate
themselves. At first, they continue to fulfill their roles in the
family structure, then little by little they withdraw from social
life; they prefer to live apart from the world and end their lives
in isolation."
Bernadette speaks about their fear of saying one word too many,
which would exclude them, and recalls that it was this realization
that motivated her work.
“When I understood the process of exclusion experienced by
these women, I told myself that it was necessary to create a place
for them to listen, talk and meet.” Thus in 1997, the Ikambéré
Association, a Rwandan expression meaning the “Welcome House,”
was born.
It is often during a pregnancy or a hospitalization for an opportunist
illness that a woman learns that she has the HIV virus, according
to Bernadette. “These women are then directed to Ikambéré
by the public-hospital network or other AIDS organizations. Here,
they can meet; they form a kind of family. They laugh, cry, support
each other and talk about their illness.”
She explains that some women are afraid the first time they come
to Ikambéré. “Some don’t come back, but
many rediscover that their bodies are worthy of care and attention.
That helps them to find their place again in their community of
origin, and to confront their daily challenges to reclaim their
roles in society.”
The association is generally well perceived by the women’s
loved ones. Members sometimes receive their husbands or male friends
there, but Bernadette prefers that the place remain for uniquely
for women. “If I am concerned with the lot of women, it’s
because I am a woman above all.” k
--
M’mah Guilavogui, Guinean Radio-Television
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