YOURSPACE

A Life Less Ordinary

I have written more than 50 songs. I have just sent them to some friends so that they can give them some rhythm. They play softly, not madly. The only rock theme I like is the Gorillas and my favourite song is one by Arjona, I don’t recall the title and will not sing it, but it says “Love does not end / just because you say goodbye / you must realise / that being absent / does not wipe out memories / or buy oblivion…

What music do the nuns listen to at the house where you live?

Any kind of music! Sometimes they spend their time listening to religious things and the news.

My house is a large one. It has grounds, the kitchen is there, the dining-room is there, the play area is over there, and here are the sisters’ bedrooms and over there the children’s bedrooms, the bathrooms, the laundry room. We are 7 girls and 5 boys. We don’t get on very well, just sometimes we do. My best friend’s name is Tatiana. The last time I saw her she was at the airport and now she lives somewhere else. I have a brother of 13 and another brother who is 21 years old, and they live in other homes. I live with the nuns and if you say that you want to go to the corner they say that you mustn’t, that it is very dangerous, that something might happen to you. It is like if you want to leave here and go one block away and your mother says that you can’t, that it is dangerous and that something could happen to you. I am therefore cooped up all day, listening to music, and writing my songs. I secretly read novels and see films.

Last year I was going to school and was starting to make friends. I have now finished the third year of secondary schooling, but I am no longer there.

Did they talk about AIDS at school?

They did when I was at primary school. They explained it as if it were just any other ordinary subject, but when they talked about certain things, we would start to laugh, because it is quite funny, isn’t it? But it was like this: at one time they would talk about HIV/AIDS, the next day about ‘flu and the next day about headaches. As I always studied with women, I find it difficult to make friends with boys. At school they were not aware of my diagnosis, because if they were, perhaps the lads would not have wanted to see me again.

My mother died when I was 7 years old. When you are small you don’t ….but when you are bigger you understand that you lack someone. My mother was on her last legs and she wanted a safe place for me and she chose it and left me there with the nuns. Then she deteriorated and died. She died, I don’t know, I think of AIDS, because I was very small. Physically I feel well, but not emotionally, because I lack this and that and I sometimes want to be in one place and sometimes in another. My mother worked and was very young when she had me, she was 21 years old. She liked a happy life, not life in the bars, but rather socialising, and she liked to go out into the streets and meet people. I have been living with the nuns for 11 years and for one year I have been at the new home. When the home opened they were happy, but when they were told that there were children to come, and that certain sisters had to go, at such and such times, dates, hours, minutes, seconds, days, and then we will go and we will take you there, when they said it was time to go, nobody wanted to go. When I am in a bad temper, they make light of it and say: “What, have you “risen with the moon”? No, I have “risen with the sun!”.

In October, 2006 I went to the ICW Conference for Girls, Women and Adolescents, because some people came to invite me. They told me that I had a trip to Panama and a trip to Disneyworld. You have to decide, because they are both on the same date. Disneyworld is an amusement park, I know all the people already on the television. But in Panama, to be united in a good cause would be much better than Disneyworld, and that is what I told myself.

We were being invited by the foundation that works with persons who have HIV/AIDS. So I said “I will go because I will learn to talk about everything that I have, everything I know and to discuss many things that have a bearing on the HIV/AIDS world, because HIV/AIDS is like no other world, isn’t it? Because there is a lot of discrimination. I felt discrimination with the nuns, because they say: “This is your spoon, you mustn’t use any other spoon. This is your plate and this is your cup”.

They had the mad idea that HIV/AIDS could be transmitted through saliva, and if you sneeze, everyone exclaims “Oh, you must be careful!” Please, please.

They think that you will not feel bad about it, and it is always unpleasant to be talked to like that. At no time have I ever cried in front of them, saying “help me, mother, because I have this and that”. If I cry, it is because it is hard, it is hard, it is hard …. For example the medicines. This is hard for me because it has now been several years. And it has exhausted me, and if I have cried it is not that I have been screaming in the corridors. Yes, I do cry, I cry when I am alone. When everyone is sleeping. I sleep in a common dormitory with all the children. Sometimes I feel like being alone with nobody watching me and crying properly. When something is published in the press about HIV/AIDS, I feel that they are addressing me, because I am one of those people….. You can’t ignore it because you can’t ignore reality.

When I was just 8 years old, I wanted to be a nun, a complete saint. What 8-year-old child would want to be a nun like that? And I imagined being mother superior at 15. When I was 9 years old, the novel “Daniela’s Diary” was published. When I saw it, I thought “how can that be, an 8-year-old girl – because I imagined that she was my age but have now realised that she is older than I am – how can an 8-year-old girl be exposed to such a large amount of people? Well if she can, why can’t I? So I had this obsession.

This is the last medicine I have left. If I don’t use it, I will regret it. If I want to see that project being developed, I must be well. Once I was walking and suddenly I ran to the classroom and started to write things down. And the girl was so inspired that she wrote four songs straight off.

I live in Guatemala. I like its music, the oath sworn to its flag, its culture, its typical food such as “tamalito chipilín”, fried beans, tortillas. It is the only country that eats original tortillas, because in other countries they make them with flour and here they are made with maize and they are delicious, specially when they have just been prepared. I loved its green areas, and the monuments that our ancestors the Mayas have left.

My smallest brother is my half-brother. He is different from us, he is whiter, with curlier hair. I have long black hair, which I like, and especially when it is wet and reaches my waist. Recently I used scissors to create a fringe and cut it back to here. And the nuns said “What have you done, who gave you permission?” and all that. As if I were your mother and asked you why did you cut your hair, you haven’t got the right to do so and won’t have the right to even if you are 52 years old.

Do you feel that they take care of you like a mother?

Oh, no. I don’t remember my mother, I was very small, and when you are that small your world is different and you just care about dolls.

I found out about HIV/AIDS when I was 13. When I was 8 I became ill and was in a very serious state because I suffered a lung condition and was critically ill and almost died, and they hospitalised me for about a fortnight or more, I don’t know. When I started to take tablets, I thought: “these nuns are trying to kill me, they make me take tablets, tablets and more tablets”, and I cried because I didn’t want to. They would ask “Lizzie, did you take them?”. And I would say yes, even though the tablet was hidden under my tongue. They tell me this, because I don’t remember myself. They would say “lift up your tongue!” And I, who was so naïve, would lift it. Many people say that it is boring to take medicine and they only do so when they have a head ache or an ear-ache. Perhaps they take about 20 pills a year. I take 180 pills in one month. When I realised that they did not want to kill me but rather do me good, I said that it had been a small girl being mischievous, that I didn’t know any better. I had heard HIV/AIDS mentioned, but did not know that this would mean for me. The mother superior told me, and as she is quite humorous, I didn’t believe her and would say to her “Oh, please”. But she would say “I am speaking seriously, you have to take it, my child, because it is for your own good, I don’t want you to fall ill”. She told me “if you stop taking them, you will fall ill and go to hospital and if they can’t save you, you will die” I thought “What does she mean?” And I remembered this. About a week later I was supposed to go to the doctor, and for me going to the doctor was like going on a little trip. When I heard the news I had a lump in my throat and felt as if they had thrown a bucket of cold water over me. I wanted to cry but did not know how to express it. “Oh, dear”, I said. The year before last when I was 14 I started to receive psychological treatment, because I was very affected by what they had told me. The psychologists are good ladies, and sometimes when I told them about my life they would cry and could not even talk and became sad. I was ceasing to be a child, a baby, and could not take myself in hand. I would go up and down and up and down at school and my performance was almost nil. Yes, it was a blow, and gradually I am recovering.

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