Gemina

Last friday we were visited by Gemina, a Malaysian woman who has been living in Sweden for several years now. Seropositive since the early nineties, she had an amazing and heart-rending story to tell. Raped and infected as a teenager by a "friend" of her family, she had a daughter who died (of AIDS, she later found out) at six months.

Unaware of their condition, when her daughter was born Gemina began to prostitute herself in order to be able to feed the child. Soon after the death, she found out she was pregnant again, and remembered a swedish missionary who had approached her sometime earlier, offering god's forgiveness and a better life. It was at the insistence of this contact that she was given the HIV tests that confirmed she had the virus.

This swedish mission in Malaysia helped educate her, taught her english and, eventually, brought her to Sweden, where she has been working as an activist with HIV and AIDS since the late 90s. At one point, while still in Malaysia, she became very sick and had to give her daughter up for adoption, for she could not care for her. The girl was 4 or 5 years old at the time and was adopted into an American family. Gemina is in contact with the adoptive parents, but not with her daughter (she says the parents think it might upset the girl, who is now 13 years old and neutralized the virus very early on).

Finally, in 2004, Gemina married Knut, a swedish man she'd known for some time. He is seronegative, seems to love her very much and is, like her, a very religious man. They became pregnant 7 months ago after a lot of deliberation and careful thinking. Knut and Gemina explained that the amount of virus in her blood is minimal and very much under control, thanks to medicine she takes regularly (incidentally, the swedish government pays for such medicine for all patients in the country; the cost is about 10,000.00 SEK per person per trimester). Knut pointed out that, thanks to this medicine, it is very difficult for Gemina to pass the infection to anyone; "doctors don't say it's impossible for the sole reason that doctors can't say such things", he remarked, and explained that the unborn child has at most a 2% or 3% chance of becoming infected.

These are the bare facts as i was assembling them while their presentation was going on. An incredible story, particularly because the resilience of someone like Gemina is truly inspiring.

On the other hand, while Knut and Gemina were speaking, it became obvious that the source of all their strength is their idea of god. It's a christian god; Jesus was mentioned over and over, and although tolerance for other religions was mentioned frequently in their speech, i was amazed to see how some among our students (one boy, in particular) kept insisting that this god of theirs be named. He was very christian, too, and because their god was his, too, he needed everyone present to know who had worked this miracle. He said stuff like "Praise Jesus!" and "Jesus, yes!", as they do in some of those revivalist services i've only seen on TV.

Not that i have anything against individual religious believes, nor do i feel that their faith takes anything from Gemina's and Knut's stories. On the contrary, i'm glad they have something that pulled them through their worst times. It's just that the underlying message is always the same: "only my god can make such wonderful things happen, and if you don't believe in it, such a resource will never be available to you."

I just hope i'd have the strength to believe as strongly in something other than god if i ever had to face such horrors.