Young People in DRC living with AIDS

Front wall of the Association of Young People Living with HIV (AJV+) main office

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has perhaps had a worse time during the last two centuries than any other country on earth. It suffered to a legendary degree under the colonization of Belgium’s King Leopold and has enjoyed little more than exploitation, brutal warfare, and horror stories in recent decades. The most persistent and sensational violence has plagued and still unsettles the eastern half of this enormous country, into which it remains difficult and dangerous to travel. Kinshasa itself was never fully invaded or forced to decay into urban warfare, though the outlying neighborhoods near its airport were briefly held by rebels who were kind enough to leave all of their guns behind when their defeat became obvious—rendering those quarters far more dangerous and crime-ridden than any other portion of the sprawling and densely populated city. The civil war, which involved most of DRC’s neighboring countries, badly handicapped DRC’s ability to look after its population or develop social programs; it also engendered numerous rapes and sexual crimes along with a scared and reckless, self-indulgent attitude that helps HIV/AIDS to spread with unusual rapidity.

Sylvie Isenge, founder and director of AJV+

A National Program Against AIDS (PNLS) is practically essential if smaller organizations are to have access to funding, either international or local. DRC’s PNLS is just a couple of years old and faces enormous logistical and financial obstacles with a minimum of experience. The self-created local NGOs that sprang from the enormous need of the population are likely to be pleased by the government’s modest forward steps. If they have been functioning for any length of time, it is also likely that they have struggled to become unusually self-reliant.

This is true of AJV+, the Association of Young People Living with HIV in the Yolo neighborhood of Kinshasa. This group has been steadily growing for a number of years under the competent and caring leadership of Sylvie Isenge, who has been living with HIV for ten years. Their central office, a cinderblock compound with a small concrete stage in a courtyard, two simple classrooms, a tiny dwelling for a motherly woman living with HIV/AIDS who helps with cooking and cleaning, and three small offices equipped without any mentionable technology, is nestled far from the main roads on a narrow dirt track in a clearly residential area.

AJV+ primary school students with faculty

In the morning the school educates 500 pre-teens and young adolescents, and in the afternoon it focuses on 200 primary school children. More than half of the students are orphans of HIV/AIDS; the remainder are children of the neighborhood who take advantage of the good education and whose parents occasionally help the school to raise money through bake sales or other small-scale fundraising exercises.

The mere existence of a school so permeated by young people living with or personally affected by AIDS is a powerful testament to the progress being made against stigmatization in Kinshasa. This does not mean, however, that the issue generates no tension between students. Ms. Isenge has to work carefully with people of varying degrees of maturity and understanding. Some students do not know what killed their parents, and many of the students are too young to grasp the reality of AIDS. Still, the prominent AIDS-related paintings on the building’s façade and the openness of some staff and students make it entirely obvious for the older ones that their school is catering to a community of people living with AIDS. Also, many of the association’s members are too impoverished to pay for their antiretroviral medications and many of them die for lack of money—the exception is the orphans, who are fully supported by the community of members.

Sewing workshop run by AJV+, Kinshasa, DRC

This support and the daily operation of the school are costly. Ms. Isenge established an income-generating scheme to make her social work possible. Older students, typically females in their mid-teens, can enroll in a nine-month training course after which they emerge as qualified seamstresses.

To date, just under ten pupils have completed the course and gone to work at the Maison de Couture Mixte, the workshop that AJV+ rents about two kilometers away. The workshop is decorated with posters that display different African fashions, skirts, dresses, and other garments.

Made-to-order African fashions

The members work in shifts, enabling AJV+ to pay its schoolteachers and medicate its most unfortunate members; they also earn a percentage of the money that their garments bring in. They have regular clients throughout the city and will be able to expand their clientele when the second batch of fourteen new tailors and seamstresses completes their training. To accommodate these new workers, Ms. Isenge will have to find and rent a second center.

Yves Nabangi and Dada Bissalu were sewing busily when our group arrived to learn about their work. Ms. Isenge referred to them as her best workers. They lost their respective fathers to AIDS before they were ten years old. Both of them were directed to the center by family members specifically to learn and practice this trade. Both of them have changed their attitudes about HIV and AIDS under the influence of Ms. Isenge’s education.

Yves shared her new awareness that AIDS does not necessarily constitute a death sentence, that those who suffer from it can still lead emotionally satisfying lives. She is beginning to think of marriage and child-rearing.

Yves Nabangi and Dada Bissalu, seamstresses for AJV+

The two girls discussed how people who are HIV-positive have a chance to create families and raise children if they are sufficiently careful. Finding work in Kinshasa can be extremely difficult; the girls were obvious grateful for the lifeline they had been thrown by AJV+.

Ms. Isenge continues to look forward. Nelly Tangua is the health reporter for RTG@, an internationally broadcast Kinshasa-based television station. Her work brings her into contact with people across the war-torn country and throughout its massive capital. Ms. Tangua was impressed with the quality of Ms. Isenge’s work and encouraged her to share information about her status and her initiatives during a special television program on HIV/AIDS awareness.

Ms. Isenge's decision to be so public about her status was not a simple one. She had to face the discouragement of her father and the apprehension that she would be recognized, pointed at, or made to feel awkward. Following the broadcast, she was depressed and unsure of her decision. But she came to feel that it had been empowering, and she got used to the minimal increase in attention that she began to draw.

Now she is hopeful about the nation’s fledgling national program and excited about the likelihood that antiretroviral medications will be widely and freely available after a few years. Her own organization has enough of a track record to merit substantive support, and she will certainly know how to utilize it, but her immediate plans continue to emphasize self-sufficiency.

If you are interested in helping the work of AJV+, please feel free to contact Ms. Sylvie Isenge at  Sylvie_isenge@yahoo.fr or through traditional mail at:

Avenue Barumbi #17
Quartier Yolo-Sude
Commune de Kalamu
Kinshasa
Democratic Republic of the Congo