I drew back in alarm. There before me, a smiling mask, was death. The virus I was so afraid of. The girls were indeed young and pretty, but what they were offering me was death. I would have to be an idiot to accept. And, what is more, be willing to pay for it.
The fear, irrational though it was, stayed with me for many years, certainly until the mid-1990s. Perhaps it is still there, even if my fits of baseless anxiety have become increasingly rare. I took a test once, even though I had absolutely no reason to be scared. But scared I was, no matter what. And, I know, many others, very many, have experienced that same fear.
16
It was in Zambia too that I first encountered someone who quite definitely did have Aids. It was a young man. He staggered from an overcrowded bus in Kabompo. He fell at the feet of the people who had come to meet him. He was taken to the hospital in a wheelbarrow. He was as thin as it is possible to be.
Two days later he was dead. He had only just made it home from Kitwe, back to his mother in order to die close to her. His name was Richard. He was 17, and he was not gay. This was in 1988.
17
At the same place, Kabompo, I listened to a Dutch doctor giving a talk about this terrifying disease. It was an evening in the rainy season. The roads were a sea of mud, but people came from all points of the compass and a number of tribal chieftains were there. The premises belonged to one of the missionary groups and were the biggest in Kabompo, but still the place was packed to the rafters. There were others standing outside, looking in through the open windows. It was unbearably hot.