Firstly I would like to send my sincerely appreciation to m2m management staff for allowing me to participate in the Africa Forum for 2009. The knowledge and skills gained from other was a great experience.

 

I arrived on Saturday 20th June 2009 and had a motivational meeting with 3 other motivators, a Kenyan Activist director working with Exclusive movement of Men against AIDS; Chikondi Chiumbuzo a teacher living positively in Malawi; Johnson Balongo a student from Tanzania and myself Maria Posita a parent living with HIV.

Registration took place on Sunday and I got Mk14, 200 cash for dinner purchase. In the evening was the night open day and welcoming music was in the air. The key note address was provided by the musician, Oliver Mtukudzi.

 

The Monday session provided a historical context as well as visioning opportunity for the week. We also heard testimonies from participants of Africa Forum 2006- their accomplishments over the last 3 years and strategies put together and how Africa Forum linked them together to form part of a large movement towards integrated programming.

 

The afternoon session was titled: - You are what you eat. The session covered issues of what we eat; where food comes from; food from garden to kitchen. We also went on a site visit to meet groups of women living with HIV. We learned about how they grow, prepare traditional food, snacks, and viewed their bakery and tailoring businesses. These businesses also involved girls who were on school holiday.
Tuesday session was about Nutrition and Counseling for people living with HIV, I learnt about counseling skills for better eating behaviors’ for PLWA’s. This was based on knowledge of the community and the available food.
On Wednesday the session covered issues on Water and Sanitation. I like the presentation and experience from Uganda, where the presenter talked about providing one such organization in Uganda providing 20-liter buckets, cotton cloths and water-guard to PLWA’s. The issue of drawing water from a water point and filtering it on the cotton cloth; standing it for 30 minutes and pouring water-guard to make it safe was a new experience for me.

 

Thursday session was about: Kitchen is just a back yard away. This was a play focusing on how to design a successful long-term sustainable garden for vulnerable community groups. I participated very actively on this day and got a badge with the red ribbon for providing one of the best answers in this session.

 

The next session was on fighting donor dependency syndrome; it included the effective strategy for sustainable integrated care for children living in adversity and PLWA’s to ensure that households take responsibility when resources are scarce and when funding stocks are low.

 

Friday morning was the day I was the morning motivator, I had problems with sleep the night prior to my presentation as this was my first day to stand in front of a large group of people who were more of policy makers. I presented my experience on positive parenting, the challenges I went through to find food for my children single handedly and the experience of living with HIV. It was a tough experience but thanks to mother2mothers they have brought great hope to my life.

 

There was a positive response from the audience  and a great applause for  my ability to disclose my HIV status at a forum like this one.
One of the participants Noordean, indicated that she has been is working with women in Malawi-in the community but she feels most of them  do not have the courage she saw in me to disclose their status  openly . She was so moved by my story and cried with joy.
Participants in the audience wanted to know whether my daughter knows my status,  and I informed them that I have openly disclosed my status to my children so that I can get support from them.

 

Finally, one of the facilitators at the meeting known as Karen invited me to attend another HIV/AIDS forum for Women to be held in November 2009.

The following session was declaring of Community of Practice where mothers2mothers has been included in group of Malawi to share integrated solutions on HIV/AIDs, food and nutrition.

 

It was also followed by a session titled Optimizing infant feeding on the context of HIV, preventing HIV infection from parents to children in fundamental, mental and children practices where interventions have been neglected and opportunity for strengthening basic infant and child feeding practice, male involvement and multisectoral  approach. This session concluded the agenda of the conference.

Conclusion: I learned a lot from the sessions and lessons provided on nutrition, food HIV and AIDS in the 7-days and made new friends. The best part of the conference was my contribution, as participant of the conference we were told to write down points on a white wall written Africa forum 2009. My comments were “please everybody must disclose their HIV status to others” and “I have benefited more from this conference, when I go back to my community I will share the knowledge and skills gained with others living with HIV/AIDS” these comments were selected as one of the best comments during this conference.  I was also very happy to receive a conference T-shirt and a 2 -meter cloth material with decoration of the six food groups.