A Moment in the Sun...

This phrase has been on my mind a great deal today. Not only because we have had a few sunny days in a row, but also because you can think of it in terms of a lifetime. Look back on your life and ask yourself, "What were my moments in the sun?" I know a few of the answers for myself. Winning the PRIDE award for writing. Graduating high school, then graduating college- both times. Seeing my nephew be born (well, okay, walking into the room about 45 seconds after he was born- if only I hadn't stopped to wash my hands!! Sometimes being anal retentive can be a bad thing.). Adopting Buddy. Just about every day I have had with Franz... especially our wedding day. Those were my moments in the sun.

But what about other people? What are their moments like? I was made to think about this again by an HBO documentary I watched called "Pandemic: Facing AIDS- India (2003)". The statistics, like everything that has to do with AIDS, are horrible. India has more HIV infected people than anywhere else in the world, except for South Africa. They say that if the rate of infection stays the same, in three years (that is now, 2006) India alone will have 37 million people living with the disease. The numbers aren't in yet, but there are multiple contributing factors that indicate this projection will probably be close to coming true. The inequality between women and men in India is staggering, and is a major factor in the spread of the disease. Married men have no obligation to be "faithful" to their wives. They, additionally, have no obligation to tell their wives if they *do* contract the disease. It is believed that if an infected man has sex with a virgin, he will be healed of the disease. Consequently, thousands of young women are being sold into the sex trade by their families, whose own economic interests have been destroyed by someone else in the family having HIV/AIDS. Another problem is that a married woman is seen as less than a woman if she does not have a child, so women who are married to an HIV infected man will (with full knowledge of his HIV status) continue to have sex with their husbands in the effort to get pregnant.

Take the husband and wife in the documentary. He is a truck driver, which means he is a member of a profession that is largely responsible for spreading the disease from the larger cities to even the smallest of villages. As in Africa, the spread of HIV/AIDS can be mapped out along all the major routes that delivery drivers frequent. Truck drivers have sex with prostitutes in any city or town they go through, she has sex with the next truck driver, and so on. A prostitute can expect to make 50 rupees if she will have sex with a man with a condom. She can make 100 to go without. And, a prostitute is not in the position to dictate whether one is worn or not. The husbands's reason for having sex with prostitutes, even after he was married, and even when he knew he was already infected, "That's what the sexual urge is-- it's an uncontrollable situation." He said that five minutes of sexual pleasure were more important than AIDS, that he used those minutes to stop thinking about it, if only for a brief time.

When they married, they were together for a brief time before he came down with fever, diarrhea, etc. Then he was diagnosed. Unusually, he told his wife. Even more unusually, he arranged for her to be tested. She was negative. They didn't have sex for over a year. Then she decided that she wanted a child, "an heir". He urged her to adopt, she wanted a child that was "theirs". They tried a test tube baby, but it didn't take. Finally, they began having sex again in an effort to get her pregnant with their own child- because, remember now, a woman isn't complete without being a mother. Finally, she got pregnant. When she went to get the pregnancy test, she also had a repeat HIV test. This time she was positive. So, their whole effort became "how can we make sure the child will be born negative?" She took a drug that decreased her chances by half of transmitting the disease to the baby.

Nine months later, she gave birth to a daughter, but she had to have a C-section in order to give birth. Because the baby could contract the disease coming down the birth canal. So, here she is, HIV + and being cut open in a makeshift OR in a community hospital in India. They converted the room just specifically for her. Other than her C-section, they don't do surgery there. And her reasons for having a child? "My mother-in-law wants grandchildren. Even if we die, our children will be here."

And what about the child, a baby girl? Luckily, she was born negative. The drugs worked. But now, both her parents are infected. What will happen to her when they die? Will she be sold into the sex trade, and contract the disease her parents tried to protect her from? Or will she simply be an orphan in a country that can't even afford to treat its sickest people.

And how did the story end? Both parents still ""healthy", with CD4 counts over 200 (the threshold between just having HIV and having full blown AIDS). And a beautiful little toddler crawling around them in their hut.

And, this must be their moment in the sun. They will live together for however long it will take before one or both of the parents gets sick, and struggle to enjoy every day- knowing that it will all end someday, probably someday soon. One parent will die, then the other... and no one can know what will become of the child. Someday, perhaps she will look back on these years with her family as the best days of her life. Her single bright shining moment in the sun.

I can't judge them. My gut instinct is to not be able to decide who I hate more... the husband for lying and cheating on his wife, essentially murdering her by degrees? Or the wife who decided she wanted a baby more than she wanted to live or be healthy? Or the mother-in-law that rode them so hard, until the wife gave in and got pregnant? Or the society that so undervalues human life, especially female human life, to such an extent that its youth are exploited in the worst ways- made into whores whose lives are worth no more than an extra 50 rupees? It's an impossible decision.

It's also one that can't be made. I haven't walked in their shoes, grown up in their society. I can't contemplate the thought of being taken from this life by a philandering husband/boyfriend/significant other without being outraged. "How dare he presume to decide for me when I should die?!?!" And this woman, it was like she believed that her life had no value, she wasn't angry at all. It was more like, "Eh, what are you going to do, you know?" Horrifying and sad... and it is just another day in India.

How can we know these things? These things we know from the t.v., the papers, the textbooks we read in school, and not *feel* anything? How can we sit back and say, "By 2010, in the infection rate stays constant, over 100 million people will be infected." and not be horrified to the point of desperation? I guess the husband was right, without knowing it. Maybe it is an "uncontrollable situation".

One thing is for sure, it's unbearable, and yet we live on each day here as if it doesn't effect us. Why can we do this?

Maybe we are spending too much time looking for our own moments in the sun, and not enough wondering what it will be for others.

Sherry