Born in Zimbabwe, Thandi Haruperi says she feels as much a Zambian as she does a Zimbabwean. Raised in Zambia since she was two her parents made sure she maintained her sense of self.  

An ex- Kabulonga Girls High School student in Zambia, Thandi met and married her first love. After 12 bittersweet years and 2 wonderful daughters the relationship floundered. Thandi escaped to the UK to mourn her lost dream and start a new life. 

After enormous struggles to adapt to a new culture, Thandi settled into a more comfortable life in England working in housing for 7 years. In her spare time she found herself doing a lot of voluntary community work as a way of giving back to life. She was a founding member of Pamodzi, a community-based organisation formed with the aim to raise HIV/AIDS awareness amongst Zambians resident in the UK. The work opened her eyes to the magnitude of the problem in her community and the misconceptions people had around HIV/AIDS. People had been indoctrinated into believing that HIV was for the morally irresponsible but her experience in community work showed her differently. Even decent, normal and respectable people were dying. Stigma was making it impossible for people to test and take action against HIV and AIDS.

Another observationon was that most people were dying because they had responded late to the disease. For most people the prospect of taking an HIV test and testing positive was worse than death. This was very sad because unlike developing countries, there was a lot of treatment, services and peer support available in the UK.   (Pic: Thandi and Desmond Tutu)

Challenged by what she saw and knew Thandi employed a strategy that was to test her; if she was going to be an effective educator she had to start with herself and take the test. How could she preach and advocate about something she had no experience of? As a commitment to her work she took her test, which changed her life forever. In December 1998 her test came back positive; with a profound effect, Thandi turned her shock and anger into action for herself and others. 

Described as one of the UK African community’s most passionate campaigners for HIV positive people, Thandi is committed to empowering and enabling HIV positive people to live longer and fulfilled lives. She has since worked with several HIV/AIDS organisations as a peer educator and sat on various Management Boards. Most of her work over the last few years has revolved around reduction of stigma and discrimination through training, peer support and advocacy. She has given national and international keynote speeches on issues for HIV positive people with a particular focus on African communities. Through this she has been involved in informing policy and promoting good practice.    

In recognition of the gap in culturally sensitive approaches and the disparities that exist between the health and the environments of different people and groups in the UK, Thandi co-founded Perikoth Consultancy in 2001, Perikoth is a health promotion firm whose main aim is addressing health inequalities through education and consultation. Her main focus is on training and consultancy. 

Thandi remains well and presents no symptoms. She has remained off medication (Anti-Retrovirals) as her blood counts have remained good. She puts this down to positive attitude, talking about ‘it’, reaching out to others and healthy living. While everyone is not so lucky, Thandi recommends that everyone gets the right information to enable them make informed choices. Thandi acknowledges that at some point she may have to take medication and says when that time comes she will deal with it. Meantime she will not only enjoy her health and but use it to do what need to be done She does not live in fear of living with the virus. It has in fact become a great motivator for her. To treasure each day she is alive and to achieve all she wishes for. She also points out that’s her price for testing early. She sees this as a rebirth – an opportunity to make good to the world whilst she can and hopefully through her experience help other people come to terms with their status and live positive, confident and productive lives right to the very end.  

Thandi champions facing death as a worthy person, to this end she is also a full-time student pursuing a degree in Health Promotion besides all her many plans.

 

HIV/AIDS Awareness