Before joining LifeLine I was involved in community work. I am a member of the church choir, and I visited many people who were sick, in the hospitals, All of this I did on a voluntary basis. AIDS has affected my family in a terrible way – my brother’s girlfriend died of AIDS, and I am looking after my niece who now has no mom to care for her. Another brother of mine lost his 18-year-old son to AIDS. When I think about my family, I think, thank God for LifeLine. I have learned so much through my work there. I am able to care for my family – many people are not so fortunate. I have been able to accept this sad loss in my family; I have been able to help my family. The skills I learned through LifeLine helped me to open my mind, they helped me to help other people accept this disease, this virus, and the effect it has on our community.

When I was doing voluntary community work, I realised I did not have proper skills. People needed so much, and I did not know how to meet these needs. One day, I heard the people talking about LifeLine on the radio, saying they were opening a centre in Khayelitsha. They were looking for volunteers, and I thought, right then, this is what I must do. You could say it was a real calling.

I did voluntary work for LifeLine for two years and this felt so good. I did all the courses and I went into the schools. In those days, the early 90’s, most of the work we did in schools concentrated the problems of child abuse, we did a lot of awareness training, and LifeLine made great progress in the community here. Suddenly people were saying, “What is this counselling?”

When social workers deal with people, sometimes there is not enough time for people to think through what is happening to them, they have to make decisions too quickly. But having a LifeLine Centre here, in the community, showed people that there is another option - they can make better decisions if they go through the counselling process.

Good things happened in the community when people learned that they could talk to each other. Sometimes, in the home, this is difficult. In Xhosa homes, the husband is often the boss. But now we had a different place, where husbands and wives could talk to each other, away from the home, away from the things that are expected there. Men could hear their wives, they could see them and say, “Oh, so this is how she feels, I never knew that.” It is the same for many relationships. Being able to talk to a LifeLine counsellor takes people away from the boundaries at home. It makes things easier. The community liked this very much; especially when they saw that the counsellors were interested in showing people that they could work out ways of solving their problems.

And so, I take my LifeLine skills with me into all parts of my life. This has helped me in my home. Things have changed there, in my personal interactions with my children, my husband. I can mange conflict much better, because I know who I am, I know myself.

In the early days of the centre, when we first opened there were only two of us. Then we employed five more staff, and slowly the centre grew. Now, we have 67 people, five of them co-ordinators, and my job is to look after everything that happens here.

In the early 1990s, we had the problem of AIDS, and it was getting worse and worse. As LifeLine counsellors in the community, we were close to people. We could do so much good work, to help people who tested HIV positive, to help those who had AIDS. We went on intensive training courses, organised by LifeLine, with doctors who came in and taught us what to do. Then we were told, “Take what you have learned, take your skills, into the community. Go into the clinics, into the hospitals.”

At first it was difficult, the social workers were not sure about us. But then they saw what we wanted to do, and what we had the time to do. We could sit with people who had been told that they were HIV positive. We could give them more time, more attention, more care. We could show them ways to cope, we could show them, “Look, there are ways of accepting what has happened to you.” The social workers and the doctors, they are so busy, there are so many people they need to see. They realised we could help them, we could actually give them more time. Things went well, and now the clinic staff and the hospital people are glad when they see us.

I did this work with people who had AIDS or who were HIV positive. I worked in the hospital in Manenberg from 1992 – 1997. People saw that my training was good, they opened up to me, they trusted me. They knew I would keep things confidential. The funny thing was, the nurses knew I was a trained LifeLine counsellor, and they would call me to talk to people with other problems, like drug overdoses, people who had been raped. I did everything.

The good thing was, more and more, people were saying, “This counselling is a very good thing.” They were intrigued and so some of them came to LifeLine and said, “We want to do the LifeLine courses.”

Then I was told that I had been promoted to Manager of the LifeLine Centre in Khayelitsha. I accepted this, because I knew I could do it. I was experienced, but it was very important to me to continue to work in the community.

So now, here I am - a trainer, a facilitator, a presenter, co-ordinating all 62 counsellors. I saw this promotion as part of the growth that has happened to me since I started in LifeLine in 1990. When I started I was a little bit tiny, a small little girl.

I can answer any questions people have about AIDS or HIV because of my experience from working in the hospital. We all keep our skills up to date all the time with ongoing training. LifeLine organises other organisations to share their skills and experiences with us; we attend courses at UCT.

I am very concerned that everybody has a good knowledge of nutrition. This is so important in our community, especially with HIV and AIDS. People do not even have to be rich to eat well, we are teaching them about food gardening, and this is a great success.

My job, the whole time, is to look and see - what needs to be done, what can we do? If there is somewhere that LifeLine can make a difference, I co-ordinate this.

My job is so rewarding. When someone stands up and says, “This is what LifeLine has done for me,” then I feel yes, it is good that we are here, we make a difference.

But it can also be frustrating. When a person who has been diagnosed as being HIV positive doesn’t want to disclose, won’t tell his her or partner, then I think, all this hard work has been for nothing, because the infection will carry on through this person. I get upset, and I have to tell myself, this is what it’s all about – working hard the whole time, getting people to change their perceptions. For example, we have had great success with the PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission) programme. HIV positive mothers are learning that it is better if they do not breastfeed their children. They are so happy when their babies are tested, and an HIV positive mother’s child tests negative. The community hears about this, and they see yes, this is something that does work, and so they change their way of thinking. It is the same with disclosure. The more work we do here, the more we are helping people, we are taking away the stigma of AIDS and HIV, slowly sometimes, but it is happening.

So many people come to me and they say when they tested HIV positive they thought, well this is the end for me, there is nothing to be done, now I am going to die. “I am so lonely,” they say, “I cannot tell my friends, I want to eat poison, I want to die.” And here, you can see that counselling does work. We listen to them, we let them say why they are afraid, and we tell them that there are things to do, people to see. We give people the strength to share, and this makes them stronger. This helps other people in our community, because they then go and tell other people, and so the education, the sharing spreads in the community.

Some people are so surprised when they learn that some of our counsellors are HIV positive. This sort of surprise is good, because they can see how well they are living their lives. They see too that LifeLine is living what it advises other people to do. So, little by little we break down the prejudices.

We are working with the doctors from Medicins sans Frontières (MSF) and we can give people anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment. People leave here saying, “It is fantastic, there is help.”

The strange thing about this HIV is that people come to us because they have been tested positive, and they think this is the big problem in their lives. But when they have talked for a little while, they see that it is not only the HIV. They are the same people with the same joys and worries, and maybe there is something else they need to talk about - problems with a mother-in-law, or one of their children. This is good, because they realise that life still goes on, the worries of everyday life and the joys are what make life good for them. At LifeLine, when someone says they are HIV positive, we do not say, “It’s all about the virus,” because it’s not. It’s all about who you are, and what you can do with your life. It’s about seeing the whole person, not the virus.

We run support groups for men, and we have men who are counsellors, out there educating other men. This is so important in our community, because it is very much a place where attitudes are changing, with the men. So much so, that we now have men involved with the PMTCT programme.

LifeLine is about communicating – teaching skills, showing how good it is to listen to people so that they talk through things, they work out their problems for themselves. We don’t ever say, “This is what you must do.” We listen. Sometimes we say, “This is what you could do, these are the options,” but we never force people or tell them what to do.

What is very important though, is that we can give accurate information, the correct facts. The information about HIV and AIDS changes every day, and we keep up to date with these changes. Think about the HIV vaccine. Now there is a difficult one, because people will say, “What! You want to inject HIV into my blood?” And here, we must educate, educate, because people are so scared, it is difficult for them to realise that things like this do good work.

But then they see the mothers who are HIV positive and their babies are not. And why? Because the mothers were educated before their babies were born. And because we make sure that the mothers have six months’ worth of formula. But once again, we do not force anything. A mother must have her options. So if she wants to breastfeed we give her the proper education about this too, we teach her how to express milk. But more and more, as they see how this works, mothers are opting not to breastfeed.

I often think about the people I work with here at the LifeLine centre, and I ask myself, why are they so good at what they do? Always, the first answer that comes into my head is trust, and confidentiality. The people who come to this centre know that what they say is kept absolutely confidential. They know they can trust the LifeLine counsellors. And of course, the Personal Growth programme is so important. The people who work here know themselves; they know their strengths and their weaknesses. They know that when a person comes in with terrible problems, it is no good to sit with that person and cry, “Oh shame, oh shame, you poor thing.” This is not going to help anyone. No, what helps is to sit with that person and hold her hand and listen and let her talk. Show her that the strength lies inside her. So many other things are important when you are a LifeLine counsellor. You can’t be judgemental. It’s very important to be well informed, to give people the correct information. Honesty, this is essential. If you say to someone, “I will see you next Thursday,” you must do this. It’s all about being committed, focussed.

One thing we are doing here, is training unemployed people to be LifeLine counsellors. This is so good, for everyone. Of course, not everyone who applies is chosen to be a counsellor, but each person who does the course benefits. Some realise that they need counselling for themselves, some continue with their training and become valuable members of our team.

Our group at the Khayelitsha LifeLine centre is very free, open, accepting. There’s warmth here, and lots of laughter and sharing. We really are like a big family, we meet every Friday to discuss the week, we network well, we exercise together – aerobics! We do many team-building exercises. We feel good, about each other and ourselves. A trained psychologist comes to see us every two weeks, and if we have any problems, we can discuss them then. We see a reflexologist if we are feeling stressed, and of course, we always have each other, for support and compassion.

Many of the people who work from this centre are out in the field; we only see them on a Friday. For the rest of the time, they are out counselling people about HIV and AIDS, in the clinics and the hospitals.

Working with traditional healers is an important part of the HIV and AIDS programme. Often, traditional medicine uses cutting as part of the cure, and some of the healers were using the same blades over and over. They have been very willing to listen to us, and to change this practice. We now have a dedicated trainer who goes out to the traditional healers. There is increased awareness among them, about proper hygiene, about HIV. The traditional healers understand what LifeLine is doing and they tell people to come to see us.

I have so many dreams and hopes for the future, especially when it comes to HIV and AIDS. I would like to see families talking to each other, listening to each other. Prevention is such an important part of fighting HIV and AIDS. If all partners could speak to each other, openly and honestly; if all neighbours could help each other freely and without prejudice. I would like to see the leaders in our community, the priests, local government officials, talking about AIDS and HIV. They can do such good work to break the stigma attached to AIDS. People look to the leaders of our country for advice and for inspiration so our leaders must talk honestly about AIDS and lead by example. They must talk about HIV and AIDS and acknowledge what is happening to our communities. The best thing would be to see a cure, but until this happens, we must handle the situation in the best way. The youth must be targeted in every way possible. We have one big youth centre in Khaya with two more opening soon. I would like to see more and more of these in all our communities. More people working for LifeLine, of course that would be wonderful. I would like to see more centres in the rural areas to make LifeLine something for all people, for all of the people of South Africa.

*The names of some people in this story have been changed in keeping with LifeLine’s policy of confidentiality.