Greetings and a happy weekend to everyone!When I was still in my hometown, I was still in secondary school then, and that was many years ago. I had a very close friend, and we were in the same church unit. She was a female friend, and I must confess, I had a crush on her. But things didn’t work out. However, it was the crush and the bond that got us very close, and I got to know deep things about her family.
When her mom became severely sick and later died due to how critical the sickness was, news spread everywhere that it was HIV/AIDS that caused the sickness and eventually killed her.
I won’t lie, when the news became so loud and filled everywhere, my mind went far too, and I drifted away from the friend. We had been taught many times about stigmatisation, especially concerning victims of HIV, but I couldn’t just hearken to such teachings. I found myself distanced a little from the lady, with the mindset that if her mom had it, there was a possibility of her having it too, because they lived together in the same house before and during the sickness, and they might have also shared some items that could be contaminated