‘€œI’m quite willing to share the story of my “baby” brother Martin. Baby because he was the last born in our family of seven children with me being the only girl.

Martin was more my child than my brother. I was responsible for him during his years at the Malawi Polytechnic. I had just graduated myself and had started teaching at a high school.

My parents were elderly and my brother’€™s guardian was away in the United States so it was left to me to support him through college. He had been one of six top students and chose to do engineering.

At 21, he graduated with distinction and got a Diploma in Civil engineering. He started working with the then Department of Agriculture and Natural resources. Later he was sent to India to do a four-year BSc in Civil Engineering that he also completed with distinction.

Martin came home twice during that time. He worked on many civil engineering projects but his specialty was Water or Irrigation Engineering. He worked in all three provinces of Malawi and transformed agricultural production.

At all the agricultural schemes that he worked at, farmers produced two annual harvests of rice and maize because of irrigation. Martin loved his work and the farmers he worked with loved him. I was extremely proud of him.

After his Masters degree from Southampton in the UK in 1996, he rose rapidly to management positions becoming one of few top civil engineers in the country. Given the poverty levels in Malawi and the fact that the country is largely dependent on agriculture, the contribution that my brother made to food sustainability was very significant.
He enjoyed his job so much he died working! He refused to take sick leave. For these reasons, Martin is not only a loss to my family and me but to the nation of Malawi.
He left behind a wife and two children, a ten-year-old daughter and nine-year old son. Adorable children.
I lived in South Africa and we only rarely met when I would go to Malawi. We spoke on the phone and wrote to each other from time to time. When I saw him two years ago (after four years), I was shocked to see how sick and thin he looked.

I had heard that he was ill and had been diagnosed with TB but I had never thought his condition would be so bad. Since his illness, he had started drinking heavily. Every time
someone talked to me about him, they drew my attention to his heavy drinking and urged me to talk to him about it.

Well, when I saw him two years ago, I knew it was a matter of time for him. I did not want to spend the one week I had with him scolding him about his drinking. That was the shortest week I’d ever spent with him. I cried most of the time.

He was too weak to talk much so my other brother, his wife and I did most of the talking. He needed a lot of rest and ate sparingly. He was a different person from the Martin I knew, strong and heavily built.

Each night I’d fall asleep crying. The only thing he was taking for his illness was his vitamins and TB medication. His haemoglobin was so low he received blood transfusions several times.

I felt powerless to help him. He spoke to me about his goals and plans. He spoke to me about his children and the plans he had for them. He could no longer do the rough and tumble with them because he was so weak.

In all that time nobody ever spoke about HIV and AIDS, yet we all knew that Martin was dying of AIDS. It was as if each one of us refused to verbalise the name of the disease, as if naming it would speed up the finality to my brother’s life. He never mentioned it himself. My frail mother kept asking him what was wrong with him because he looked so
sick. When he died he had a few grams of blood in his body.
When we said our goodbyes at the end of that week, I knew I’d never see him again. Tears just fell from my eyes as they have done every time I think about him. He e-mailed me regularly after that. I’ve still kept one of his e-mails on my machine as if to keep him alive.

The strange thing is that while I’ve dealt better with the death of my father and mother, I still have great difficulty accepting Martin’s death.

His was such a short life, even though he was 43 when he died. He still had so much to offer. When I came back to Cape Town I knew that I’d have to adopt his children to honour his memory. Also knowing that it is a matter of time for his wife as well.

HIV and AIDS was no longer a textbook disease. Every time I look at students, it feels like I am looking at my brother. I see future engineers, doctors, scientists, politicians, academics, etc. I wonder if they take the HIV and AIDS messages seriously. I worry about losing them too. I worry about my children.

When I promote the work of our HIV/AIDS Unit, I’m not just fulfilling my job as Dean of Students. The disease has a whole new meaning for me.

When treatment debates rage, I cry inside knowing that my brother’s life could have been prolonged a little if he had had access to treatment. Now when I talk about him to whoever would listen, it is therapeutic.

No loss should be easier to bear, but Martin was the youngest in the family and he had done so well for himself professionally that we were all very proud of him.

Three and half months after Martin died, our mother passed away, as much with a broken heart as with her illness. The only person who spoke to me about Martin’s real condition was one of my sister-in-laws.

There was a “knowing silence” about the disease.   The symptoms were all there.

We’d seen it on other people but now that it was in the family, we found it difficult to talk about it. We were just in denial and hoped for a miracle. Even though we knew the outcome of his illness, we were totally devastated when he finally died. I still haven’t got over it.

Given the HIV/AIDS prevalence figures in Malawi, such denial shouldn’t exist. I don’t think it was a case of stigma because there are too many people who are ill that one knows.   People in Malawi prefer to site the opportunistic infections as the cause of death than calling it AIDS.

It’s almost as if it is “shameful” to die from AIDS.   I know that if Martin had had access to the right treatment, he’d still be alive.

Talking about Martin’€™s death, for me, is a way of healing and mourning. It’s a way of acknowledging my family’s loss. It’s a way of telling him (and others) that I loved him regardless of any stigma that people may have placed on him.

I recently heard that my sister in-law (brother’s wife) is now very ill and has been taken home to her mother’s village. It looks like it’s a matter of time for her.

She sent for the children who were staying with my other brother which means they’ve been taken out of school.   The older girl who was the apple of her dad’s eye still asks about her dad and when he’s going to come back.

It just breaks my heart.