by Rita Palombo

09 October 2008

Managua, Nicaragua: I can still remember my arrival at Managua's airport: I was tired, worried, hungry and dirty! Arriving from Kenya - where I had lived for more than a year - everything looked so different that I could barely understand where I was.

Sitting on the bed in and old Nicaraguan lady's house, known by everybody as 'Doña Choly', I couldn’t stop looking at my job description and wondering what my future would have been as communication officer at the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO)… I still couldn’t imagine that in a few months I’d became one of the most active defenders of human rights for people with HIV and vulnerable groups to the virus.

My name is Rita Palombo and I am working as a UNV volunteer intern at PAHO, which will be the leading agency for HIV/AIDS in Nicaragua for the next two years. Every morning I wake up at 7.00am; play with my dog Julie, who I brought from Italy and who follows me wherever I go; and have breakfast with my three flatmates: Hector, a brilliant Nicaraguan guy, Andrea and Maria, two UNV volunteers who happen to share with me their 'Nica' adventure. I arrive at PAHO around 8.00am and, passing my colleagues’ smiles and wishes for a good day "by the grace of God", I get to my office and start my working day.

In the beginning, I spent all my time reading thousand of documents on HIV/AIDS, the Nicaraguan context, and UN strategies on the epidemic but I can say that my true understanding came when I met people who were living with HIV.

One of my initial tasks was to identify the main actors in the national response to HIV/AIDS, and therefore to meet the organizations of people with HIV. Weird as it is, I had never met people with HIV before and I was so full of natural prejudices and false knowledge that, when I realized that I was touching and talking to them, I felt terribly scared. Observing my life from an external point of view, I was talking about work and at the same time thinking that they didn’t look like people who were dying! How stupid I was!

It’s been thanks to those people, thanks to their strength and immense desire to fight to improve their lives, that I have understood the real meaning of my presence in Nicaragua. Now I organize training for university students, for teenagers, for UN staff talking about HIV, trying to fight stigma and prejudice through the only winning gun: awareness.

Julio, my friend and the director of ANICP+VIDA (la Asociación Nicaragüense de Personas Positivas Luchando por la Vida), a local organization of people with HIV, always tells me that he doesn’t want to live another 10 years but 20, 30 more… and he first discovered he had HIV 20 years ago!

I can't stop admiring people like him and like Arely, spokesperson of La Asociación Nicaragüense de Personas Viviendo con VIH/SIDA (ASONVIHSIDA) and the first woman with HIV who went public in Nicaragua, for having the strength to believe in the right to life and to fight hard enough to start the ARV therapy in Nicaragua. Thanks to their patience in giving their testimony as people with HIV I succeed in reaching people’s hearts and minds, I succeed in creating questions in people’s beliefs and in breaking the silence.

Our work as HIV officers in Nicaragua is to reach those vulnerable groups that for different reasons are more likely to be exposed to the virus: among them I mainly deal with those of sexual diversity. Many think that HIV is a problem of homosexuality; only a few consider that transgender, transvestites, lesbian, gays and other groups face severe discrimination when accessing health structures… for which reason many of them just stop going to the hospital!

Talking about HIV is talking about sex and sexual habits, which is a huge challenge in Nicaraguan society. Before starting this Nicaraguan experience, I never really thought about a 'trans life', now I deeply believe that we all have the right to choose how to live our lives, to feel different in a different body and not to be ashamed of it!

Athiany, a transvestite girl I met, told me how hard it was for her to keep on studying after she discovered that her sex didn’t match with her sexual identity. She was a sex worker for one year when she first entered the university, than she got a grant and she could dedicate herself entirely to numbers and administration, which is what she dreamt of since she was a child. Thanks to her determination, she is now an accountant in an organization which represents people of different sexual expressions; she is a good professional and is accepted with her gender identity by all her colleagues.

If being a UNV volunteer is about believing in what we do, in the main aim of our action, I must say that I am incredibly proud of being a UNV volunteer intern and having the unique opportunity to share my experience, my beliefs, my values and my expertise with people who deserve respect and consideration for their lives, their health, their sexual expression, their diversity.

Maybe one year is not enough to expect a real change in what I do, but I can feel that those people trust me and trust my ability to improve their lives, and this is enough for me to keep on giving my all to them, now as a UNV volunteer intern, and in the future simply as a volunteer.