How I found out
I was diagnosed after the worst thing that ever happened to me, in Nigeria. The assault, the hospital, the test and the sentence that followed are in Owerri to London, told once, in order, so that I never have to tell it again. What I will say here is that I received the result in a country where the same law that made me a criminal made it unthinkable to explain how I got the virus, and that I spent the first months believing what Owerri believes: that it was a death sentence and a judgement.
It is neither. It took a clinic in England, a nurse who did not flinch, and a leaflet with four letters on it, U=U, to teach me that.
What undetectable means
Modern HIV treatment, called antiretroviral therapy, usually one tablet a day, reduces the virus in the blood to a level that a test cannot detect. A person who is undetectable cannot pass HIV on through sex. This is not hope, it is settled science, endorsed by the World Health Organization and by every serious HIV body on earth: Undetectable equals Untransmittable. I have been undetectable for a long time now. My life expectancy, on treatment, is the same as anyone's.
Stigma
In Nigeria, HIV is still spoken of the way it was spoken of in the 1990s: as something that happens to bad people and ends in a coffin. Add being gay and you have the two things a family will never admit at a burial. People stop treatment because collecting the pills would mean being seen at the clinic. People die of shame, with the medicine on a shelf a bus ride away.
In England the stigma is quieter and mostly inside the African community. I have been asked to leave a prayer group. I have had a man on a dating app tell me he does not date sick people, on the same day my clinic told me I could not transmit it to anyone. I say all this because I want the next Nigerian who is diagnosed to read at least one voice that is not ashamed.
I am not living with HIV in spite of being open about it. I am living because I am open about it. Silence is what kills.
Why I say it publicly
Because the first person who told me it was survivable was a stranger on the internet. Because my mother needed to hear it from me and not from Owerri. Because a support line run by a man who hides his status would be a lie. And because when I am gone, I want the record to say: he had HIV, he lived well, he told the truth.
If you have just been diagnosed
- You are not going to die of this if you take the treatment. Not this year, not in ten.
- Start treatment as early as you can. In Nigeria it is free through government clinics; in the UK it is free for everyone through the NHS.
- Tell one person you trust. Not everyone. One.
- Read the HIV help page, which has numbers to call in Nigeria and the UK.
- Then call the support line. I have had this conversation before. I am still here.