"My father is my hero"

At a tender of age of 11 years, Albertinah Monageng had no choice but to take care of her HIV positive father after the death of her mother. The father is popular activist Stanley Monageng who runs an NGO called Thusang Bana in Molepolole. His late wife was however, HIV negative. Now 21, Albertinah, a BSc Honours in Computers with Botho College tells The Midweek Sun her story. Instead of going out to play with her friends, her daily concerns were now a matter of life and death. Suddenly the child had to bath her ill father, change and feed him.

She even had to take him to the clinic for checkups and to collect his medication. She also had to ensure he took his medication on time. Monageng, 72, has been open about his status since he was diagnosed and he goes around teaching Batswana about the disease and preventative measures such as Treat All. He has been living with the virus for 17 years now. When he met his wife, she already had three children and they had two more together. Holding tears from rolling down his cheeks, he says that back then when he contracted the virus, people living with HIV were shunned and ridiculed.

“My stepdaughters didn’t want anything to do with me and there was a time when we had to take one of them to court for insulting me about my status,” he says, adding they didn’t want to share anything with him. When his wife passed, the two kicked him out of their home. What Albertinah, or Tinah as she is affectionately known, remembers is that even though she was young, her parents called her and her siblings and told them that their father was HIV positive. “It was not neighbourhood gossip, they sat us down and told us.

I was hurt when my siblings kicked dad out of our house,” says the last born, adding that her late grandmother even fought with her father for her custody, saying he was sick and going to die. She later followed her father and went and stayed with him and continued taking care of him. Tinah had seen her father at her worst. She recalled one time when he reacted to ‘a medication that made him thin to a point of thinking he was going to break his bones.’ But she says she had to be strong for him. At primary school, the young girl stunned her schoolmates and teachers with a poem to celebrate her father. “My father is a hero. My hero. He stood on top of trees to talk about HIV discrimination,” so goes the poem.

She tells this publication that she is proud of her father. “I never discuss his status with anyone, not even with my friends. He’s been popular since I was young. It’s better when it’s him sharing his story. I love him so much,” she says. She advises children who are taking care of their HIV parents to continue doing so with love. She also urges them to take protective measures to avoid being infected. “The status doesn’t change anything. He is still your parent and needs your love and support,” she says.