Читать книгу Contradicting Maternity - Carol Long - Страница 14

Hlengiwe, eight months pregnant with her first child, was diagnosed HIV-positive two months previously. She is employed and, like many women with or without partners, lives with family members, in this case her cousins. On the day of the interview, she was wearing a short, bright sundress and was vibrantly attractive. She has been together with her boyfriend for the past three years, and has told him, but no-one else, of her status. She is not sure who brought HIV into the relationship. She describes her boyfriend as supportive, but she worries that he has continued drinking excessively. She worries about his health, but also suspects he is drinking in order to avoid talking to her: ‘to the person always drunk … maybe you cannot hear those things maybe she wants to say to you and all. I don’t know.’ When she told him of her status, she shared the concern of many women that he would leave her:

Mm, in terms of the HIV, I think he’s done better compared to other men, because if you tell them that you are HIV, they run away, but he didn’t. … But I said to him, ‘But the way you are acting, eh, for me, I do understand that it’s difficult, but you make me suspicious; I cannot rest. But I have to be prepared; I know I’m stronger. I have to be prepared and you know what, you’ll deal with this alone; maybe you’ll deal with it alone.’ Then he said, ‘no, I’ll never do that.’ But you never know.

She remains unconvinced that he will not leave her.

Like many others, Hlengiwe was brought up by grandparents – in this case both her paternal and maternal grandmothers. Her father has a wife and three children, including herself. She feels that her mother may blame her for the fact that she is not together with Hlengiwe’s father, and imagines her mother thinking, ‘my life is a mess because of [Hlengiwe]; if I was not pregnant [with Hlengiwe], maybe I would still be going out with her father’. Hlengiwe understands that her mother could not support her financially, but feels rejected by her:

I understand that she’s not working and there’s nothing maybe she can do for me, but as a mother, even if, according to me, you are not working doesn’t mean you have to shut your whole world. The love it’s there and the love makes another person grow. Somewhere, somehow I resent my mother; I don’t like her so much. Ja.

Her mother has not seen her since she became pregnant. She feels isolated from her family, alone both emotionally and financially and forced to rely on her boyfriend. For example, she explained that she started a tertiary qualification after she finished school, but did not complete the first year, because she was unable to pay her fees.

So [my family] know nothing about me, they just brought me, in our culture when you are 21, you have to see for yourself, but how can you see for yourself if you are not working, if you do not have an education? … How can I work a professional job, yet I’m not educated? You see, Carol, such things?

It should be noted that it is not necessarily culturally the case that adults are left to fend for themselves; it was expected that family members would look after one another, and more specifically that participants had obligations to financially support siblings and parents. Hlengiwe, however, felt she could rely on nobody.

This, combined with the powerful social stigma associated with HIV, prevented her from disclosing her status to others:

Yes, maybe they can blame you: ‘Ja, you, because you live alone, that’s why you are like this today. You hang around men.’ All these things because they don’t understand; they live where they live; their life, it’s fine, but if you start disclosing this information – because they take HIV/AIDS, I’m sorry to say that, a bitch or what, you know, such things, not knowing how did you get that, but because you are HIV, it means you have been sleeping around and sleeping, sleeping around.

Hlengiwe’s fears of being labelled echo statements made throughout interviews, but are specifically framed by her own story, particularly her independence and isolation from her family: ‘because you live alone.’

Just before Hlengiwe participated in the interview, she discovered at the clinic that the Nevirapine treatment offered does not guarantee that her baby will be negative. She was shocked, as she had presumed her baby would automatically be safe. She had also not been aware that she would have to wait a considerable period of time before she knew her baby’s test result. Having very recently discovered that she was HIV-positive, the shock of facing this uncertainty regarding her baby was devastating news. She became tearful in the interview when contemplating the implications. This was a primary concern for all women interviewed, and the pervasiveness of this uncertainty was present in the postnatal clinic, where some women were still waiting for their babies’ results.

Because Hlengiwe knew that HIV can be transmitted through breast milk, she had decided not to breastfeed (as had all the women I interviewed). The probability of transmitting the virus while breastfeeding depends upon a number of factors and is reduced if exclusive breastfeeding is undertaken (Coutsoudis, 2005). There is some debate regarding whether women should be discouraged from breastfeeding or not. Exclusive breastfeeding is difficult to adhere to in economically challenged environments (Thairu et al., 2005), but it has been argued that the advantages of breast milk for overall mortality outweigh the risks of possible infection (Bland et al., 2002; Coutsoudis et al., 2003). This dilemma is complicated by beliefs and practices. For example, Kruger and Gericke (2003) found that all their research participants believed that breast is best (thereby problematising the use of formula feed), but none believed in exclusive breastfeeding. Hlengiwe, like most of the women interviewed, was not aware of this debate, but had definitively decided not to breastfeed. She was worried, however, that this would be interpreted as a sign that she is a bad mother or as an indication that she is HIV-positive. It is culturally expected that an African woman should breastfeed openly in public, and this is understood as the quintessential sign of being a good mother. For many women, this complicated their construction of themselves as ‘good mothers’. They were also criticised by family members for being bad mothers. The cultural breast defines the mother; a woman who chooses not to breastfeed is choosing to reject her culture. Even for women who resisted cultural discourses, the cultural imperative to breastfeed had to be addressed. One woman, for example, said she wasn’t affected by not breastfeeding, because she had always felt that black women who breastfeed in public do not respect their bodies. Her way of justifying her decision to me could not be done without reference to culture. The cultural implications of choosing not to breastfeed are further complicated by the social assumptions that women who do not breastfeed are HIV-positive. Hlengiwe was scared that her secret would be exposed by her choice not to breastfeed, but felt that she had no other choice. In terms of the cultural definition of motherhood, many felt personally bereft of feeling like mothers.

Hlengiwe planned to conduct another interview with me, but cancelled at the last minute because she wanted another woman, who was contemplating adoption, to do an interview instead. She did not want me to contact her for fear of arousing suspicion. I did not see her in the postnatal clinic and she did not contact me. Like all the stories in this study, my telling of it is incomplete.