AS we are born into this world, our lives quickly become a gigantic episodic stage play such that at any one time, we play or assume a particular role. How successful we sail through the hurdles of life thus depends on how well we can play our roles along the line. For example, in a given learning process, there is the role of a speaker and that of the listener. You are either playing the role of the speaker or that of the learner. In school, you are either the teacher or a student, back at home; you are the father, mother or the child. You are either writing or reading what somebody wrote. You are a reader reading this article because I’ve been the writer. Role-playing is thus an integral part of human existence. A great teacher whom I admire – Thomas Emerson wrote, “It takes two to speak the truth, one to speak and the other to listen.” Orderly speaking and listening are indispensable components of any profitable conversation but then in speaking and listening, it takes what communicators will term a broadcasting station and a receiving station (emitter vs receptor). If there is going to be any progress or profitability in the communication process, it will be hinged on how well each of these terminals plays their assigned roles.
A broadcasting station that emits the wrong messages or the right messages in the wrong way is as good as no broadcasting station at all. It could rather constitute a danger to the growth of the receiving stations. In the same way, a wonderful broadcasting station with a good methodology, communication strategy and enriching messages would just be as good as a medical doctor in the cockpit of a jet bomber if there is no receiving station turned to the right channel to receive the information.
Receiving the right information is as important as acting upon the information to realize positive results other wise the learning process would have no meaning. Good information received should be able to set into motion the right internal transformational mechanisms that will lead to the right actions and modalities of attaining desirable results otherwise, it becomes another species of seeds falling on rocky grounds as Jesus’ parable of the Sower tells Christians.
Spanning the last two decades the world over, we lived in another Noah’s era with a gigantic flood enveloping us. Unlike that of Noah’s time, it’s been most devastating. HIV and AIDS is that flood I am talking about. The statistics we’ve seen and continue to see are frightening, according to global estimates by UNAIDS, 40 million people were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2001 while 33.3 million still live with it at the end of 2009 the world over following the November 2010 updates. Of this number, as much as 20.3 million in 2001 and 22.5 million in 2009 were found in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. 2.2 million in 2001 and 1.8 million in 2009 were newly infected with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. These figures indicate a drop but mask the local realities in terms of loss of dear ones.
Statistics as such confirm to us that the answer to any question demanding whether a cure is around the horizon remains a firm no. The drops noticed in the statistics credit the availability of antiretroviral programs ongoing. We would have loved to think that a cure is possible now or may be we keep dreaming of a future vaccine that will render AIDS history. Whatever our state of minds, the truth remains that HIV rages on. It has already devastated Africa. It's on a rampage in Eastern Europe, and it got out of control in parts of China and India. Asia as a whole is the only region apart from Sub-Saharan Africa today with more people living with HIV/AIDS than any other region on earth.
The HIV ‘rains’ are extremely heavy and so the AIDS floods are sweeping through all the corridors of the earth already. Despite the heavy presents of antiretrovirals and education programs, I maintain the fear that that before we have time to build a Noah-like ark, everything would have been watched away. Even if we did, there might not be the available pair of humans to inhabit the ark, as all would have been bed ridden by AIDS.
Being able to construct an accommodating ark and getting inside in time would depend on how much we have tuned our receiving stations to capture the instructions and messages from broadcasting stations. Noah succeeded to get all that was needed in his ark because he had tuned his receiving station to God’s broadcasting station. He was there to receive every bit of information and instruction that God gave him and most importantly, he was ready to act upon this information to produce the ark. That explains why he survived the devastating flood.
How many of us today have turned our receiving stations to the numerous stations broadcasting information on preventing HIV/AIDS? How many of us have that burning desire to assume the role of readers, listeners or students to learn what this mysterious disease is all about? We find ourselves fighting and enemy we don even know. It’s been over two decades in the laboratory and we are the more confused on the true nature of the HIV. Our receiving stations especially in the third world are tuned to other issues; we worry over politics, economics, militarism and false democracy. We cling to and hang around power; we worry over territorial boundaries while giving little attention to the fundamental aspects of our lives – health. Corruption, structural adjustment programs and poverty reduction strategy papers blind our visions and rob us of the little energy left that could have been focused on fighting this deadly disease.
It’s time we recognize that HIV/AIDS knows no boundaries. It infiltrates into the most secret sectors of countries and governments, it mingles within politics, obliterates power, aggravates the repercussions of war and crosses national and international boundaries unnoticed irrespective of what the frontier guards might think – why not HIV requires no passport or visa.
This therefore means that the ball can not remain only in the cot of Medics and opinion leaders. National governments and international organizations would just have their time and their work. They have to keep on conceiving, refining and publishing new strategies. More importantly, they need to broadcast the information. A greater part of the work lies in the hands of individual. People need to tune their receiving stations to receiving and accepting the right information. While the broadcasting stations have a responsibility to send out the right information capable of initiation the right action patterns, the receiving stations need to use this information gained to enact behavioral changes. Knowledge gained that is not put into effective use is useless.
When we listen to an obituary over the radio concerning a loved one, we scarcely question the authenticity of the announcement or the background of the announcer; we are carried away by grief and take them for their word, we belief in the power of the printed word. Is this the same scenario when an HIV/AIDS educator or resource person talks to us about the disease? I am afraid in most of the cases; it’s the other way round. We start questioning their moral authority, their educational background and justification. We find all excuses to disbelieve them especially when the picture presented clashes with our static mental stereotypes about the disease.
Situations have come up where in people question their HIV test results given to them by renowned medical doctors even when they know they had been involved in risky activities. Before going for the test, some had painted mental pictures about the test such that pre and post-test counseling could not wash away thus the reasons for their bewilderment when things turn the other way round. Going in for a test means coming to terms with the fact that the results would end up either positive or negative Facts don’t change only opinions do. When the results come out negative, you take future precautions and if it turns out positive, you learn how to cope with the situation. This side of it has been lightened up by the availability of antiretroviral drugs today. There is no need at such time to play the I – Can’t –Believe-This game when your results are announced because before the test, you were prepared to receive either of the two.
This is clearly another demonstration of what happens often when receiving stations don’t get the right signals from the broadcasting stations. The underlying truth is that apart from the dangers you might put others into, accepting or rejecting your test results when they turn out positive really will not change the fact that you are hence a living corps playing for time. This is the hard fact whether we like it or not.
With the presence of hundreds of broadcasting stations around the world today, staying clear of the HIV means that in practical terms, you become a receiving station that is tuned to receive the right information being broadcasted. You must act upon this information such that it modifies your behavior. Never say ‘I will act tomorrow’ for that one last sexual intercourse you have planned to have before changing is the one that might infect you with a full dose of the HIV. Should that happen, you know you have signed your own death warrant AIDS.
Receiving Stations are there because there are broadcasting stations, if you are not a receiving station, make sure you are broadcasting. If you are missing in action, then you might just be a sure candidate for the HIV.
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