MONTEGO BAY, St James – A group of HIV positive Jamaicans say they are looking for a sponsor to help them launch an association that would make it easier for them to find and keep work.

The association, which the leader, Mark, plans to call Hard Working People (HWP), would band together to get jobs for people who find it difficult to get and keep jobs because of the stigma attached to the deadly virus.

“So far it’s four of us – me, another girl and two other guys – said Mark, who asked the Sunday Observer not to publish his first or surname for fear of being stigmatised, and by extension, discriminated against.

Born to a 15-year-old mother in St Mary in April 1975, Mark said he quickly fell upon the mercy of the State as his grandparents, who took custody of him, were unable to manage the job of raising him. When he was nine years old, he was placed with the COPSE place of safety for Boys in Hanover, he said. There he learned cynicism from the then administrators of the home.

“I didn’t get much education. They said the machette would be our pencil, and the grass our book. The iron fork to dig up the ground was the Ninja (bike)…so they’d tell the big boys to go and ride the bike,” he said wryly.

Good behaviour earned him a transfer to the Fairmount home by the time he was 12.

But he ran away after being caught with some sugar that had been stolen from the institution’s store room.

“I never stole it, someone gave it to me and I was using it to make Tamarind balls, but then my name got caught up in the thing and they threatened to beat me, so I ran away,” he said.

Although his intention, on running away, was to find his grandparents in St Mary, he got side-tracked by a friend who had also run away from the home, he said.

Life on the streets became a norm for him, although many times he was caught and dragged back to the place of safety by individuals eager to secure the rewards for catching absconders – a tin of Milo and a pound of bulgar or rice. However, he was determined not to stay and kept escaping. Eventually, he tired of his street mate and set out for his grandparents again. On arriving at their home, his grandfather, who was by then a widower, chased him away, but recanted when the boy began to cry.

“When I began to cry he was convinced that I had changed and so he invited me to stay,” he said.

By the end of the holiday period, Mark decided it was time to go again.

Bidding his grandfather goodbye, he set out on the road of life, acquiring two children and, alas, the deadly HIV virus along the way. He didn’t know he was infected until about six years ago when, ravished by a persistent itch, he sought help at one of the State’s health clinics. There he was advised of the possibility that he might be HIV positive.

He immediately went into denial.

“I got mad, and angry and said they were trying to scare me,” he recalled.

However, there was no getting around the truth, and he found himself getting weaker and weaker. He eventually came to grips with the bad news and started to take advantage of the advice that was being offered to him by health care professionals. As time progressed, he took on the will to live again and even got married to a woman who is also living with the virus.

Today, they both attend church and Mark, who apart from a nervous disease which affects his walk, enjoys relatively good health. He is also confident that his new found faith will take him through life.

“Right now, I really just need some assistance to get started so I can buy a weed whacker and find work and help myself and others, so if I could get a sponsor I’m sure it would help,” he told the Sunday Observer.