I gave him SEX he gave me $1,000 and AIDS

Adelle Doeman, 35, accepts that she is going to die – possibly not very long from now.

She lives at the Good Shepherd Foundation, a hospice in Montego Bay for terminally ill persons. When she dies, Doeman will leave five children.

Doeman has full-blown AIDS and has been through the whole gamut of emotions. Regret, resignation, anger, acceptance, hope.

She is learning other things, too: that people are not necessarily judgemental and can be genuinely kind. Which is not the circumstance that led to Doeman’s illness.

“I was at home one day and did not have anything to give the children to eat,” Doeman explains.

“I saw a man passing by and I begged him a money to buy dinner for the kids. He was somebody I had known for a while. He had left the community and returned. He said he would give me the money but I had to give him something in return.”

So she gave him sex in the hope that he would give her the money. But it didn’t quite turn out the way she expected.

“The first time we had sex he said he did not have any money on him, but I must come to him at X time for it. When I went the second time we had sex and he gave me $1,000.”

He also gave her AIDS.

“I had heard the rumour that he had AIDS but I never believed it because him did look good same way. It was only after he died in 2001 that I began to suspect that it was it,” says Doeman who, before her illness, earned $2,000 per week picking oranges.

Although she had her suspicions after this man’s death, she was too afraid to act. She did not get tested for HIV/AIDS and did not get early treatment.

It is a delay for which Doeman is paying dearly.

“She suspected all this time (that she had AIDS) and never said anything to us,” says Doeman’s older sister, Prudence. “She did not even hide and go get tested. It was only in February when she got really sick and was admitted in hospital that we learnt that it was full-blown AIDS.”

Prudence has stuck by her sister as she battles with the disease.

“My other sister had said to me that Adelle was sick and had lost a lot of weight. I live in a different parish so I don’t see Adelle much. But the last time I had visited her and I saw the rashes on her hand, she said that she was probably allergic to something in the orange grove where she worked picking oranges. I thought it was either that, or that maybe it was chicken pox,” says Prudence.

But Doeman, at first, had difficulty facing up to the condition she suspected she had. There was shame and guilt.

“Mi shame, mi shame, mi shame,” she says. “I just could not bring myself to say anything. I could not even bring myself to get tested. I just told myself that I did not have it.”

Obviously weak, she is giving this interview sitting up in her bed at the hospice. She was moved here three weeks ago on the recommendation of her social worker as her condition declined.

“My sisters quarrelled with me,” Doeman says, over the fact that she did not share information about her health with her family. “They said I should have told them from early and we could have caught it before it developed into full-blown AIDS. So maybe I would have lived a little longer.”

Her fears had some basis. While two of her three sisters have rallied around, the third has turned her back on Doeman.

“The third one nuh business wid me,” Doeman says. “She say a licky-licky (greed) mek mi catch AIDS but that’s not true. This is something that could happen to anyone.”

Another difficulty for Doeman was how to tell her children and her boyfriend – the father of her last child – that she had AIDS.

“When I found out earlier this year that it was full-blown AIDS, I just lock up in the house and fret,” she says. “I did not come out and I just thought about not making it through this and leaving the children.

“I did not tell the children – well only my big son, Kemar.”

Kemar, 17, seems well-adjusted and stoic.

He didn’t tell his siblings about his mother’s condition and surmises how they heard.

“Probably is people from the community tell them,” he says.

Kemar dropped out of school to help take care of his mother and look after the younger children.

“I was sad when I found out, but I help her a lot,” he explains. “I go with her to the doctor and help her to cook and wash and so on.”

Her second son, however, has also rejected her.

“Him curse me and call me AIDS victim and make me feel bad but I don’t hate him,” she says.

Doeman, for as long as she could, avoided telling her boyfriend of her illness. She was afraid he would react violently.

“Him ignorant so maybe he would have drawn a machete and chop me up, so I did not tell him,” she says. “But I realised that he heard because he stop coming around and talking to me but he would still bring what little he had for his son. I was depressed about it because mi did love him and him did love me too. In recent times, he has talked to me from time to time.”

It has been a rough road but Doeman says she is at peace now.

She no longer fears death.

“I have already picked out where I want to be buried – right beside my sister who died in her teens. I think about death often because of the children. I wish I could see them grow up, but I leave them in the hands of God,” she says.

Her family, too, has started preparing for her death and have already identified material to build the grave.

“We have blocks, stone and sand already. I am not too sure where the funeral home money will come from but we will see,” says Prudence.

They have received some assistance, however, from media personality Christene Hewitt, who has had a fund-raising concert to help with Adelle’s needs as well as her children’s.

“We had a show in Mandeville and we collected $20,000 for her so we have put that down to help bury her. The children have been left with their 79 year-old sickly grandaunt. The youngest child – the four-year-old – is also sickly. We are watching him and we might have to get him tested too,” says Hewitt.

Adelle, however, sings Hewitt’s praises.

“She has helped me to deal with my fear of death and I feel a bit better knowing that she will try to help the kids,” says Doeman, while explaining that Hewitt has been supplying her family with groceries and helping with her hospital bill for the last few months.

“I have about 34 women with AIDS working with. I am trying to raise funds to help them and their families,” says Hewitt.

“I would like to see that their last days on this earth are comfortable. I would like to remind people that these women are important and they deserve to die with dignity – no matter their circumstances.”

At the same time, Adelle herself had some things to say about death and dying and how other women should live.

“If I could live life over, I would go to church and get married. I would not bother with the plenty partner business. I would stick to one man. I blame myself too, because if I had sought help earlier maybe things would work out different,” she says.

“But I would tell women when you go with a man, use a condom, protect yourself and stick to one partner. I feel ashamed, like I prostituted myself for a small sum of money.

But when you are in want, it is not nice. That was the only way I felt I could get money. Now I see that was wrong.’

Actions that must begin without delay

Selected excerpts from ‘Women and HIV/AIDS – confronting the crisis’

1. Support positive women and their organisations and networks. Listen, respond to and include the voices and demands of positive women who are living with HIV and AIDS in efforts to bring about critical changes that are needed in policies, strategies and laws as well as funding for programmes ranging from the national level to community-based initiatives.

2. Make AIDS money work for women. Ensure fully resourced programmes that respond to women’s needs and circumstances – in prevention, community-based care, education, violence and human rights.

3. Empower women and girls economically by providing them with access to credit and business and leadership skills in order to break the cycle of poverty, gender inequality and vulnerability to HIV transmissions.

4. Increase access for women to both male and female condoms and skills in negotiating their use. Increase provision of disposable needles and syringes and harm-reduction programmes for men and women who are injecting drug users.

5. Ensure universal access to voluntary counselling and testing that addresses stigma, discrimination and gender-based violence and encourages partner testing, couples counselling and confidentiality.

‘Women and HIV/AIDS – confronting the crisis’ is a joint report produced in 2004 by UNAIDS, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations

Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).