This story was published in Exit Newspaper (LGBT, South Africa), which I
edit, shortly after Robert Tseisi died, and subsequently in Positive Nation
in the UK.
I do a lot of writing in the nature of my job. Writing this helped me deal
with the trauma of his death. It is probably the best piece I have ever
written.
- Gavin Hayward submitting -
By Gavin Hayward
I left him at the border with his suitcase of clothing and a backpack I'd bought in Italy, and a cousin to help him over the bridge because was too weak to get there himself. He said he would miss me, and I would have driven him right to where he wanted to go, to his family on the other side, but didn't have papers to get my car into Zimbabwe.
In the backpack was a new cell-phone I had bought so we could keep in contact, some biltong and peanuts for easy protein, and a Checkers packet with all the medicines he needed. Purbac to kill the PCP in his lungs, Diflucan for the thrush, Colostrum and African Potato to boost the CD4 count…
He kept my ring on his finger. I kept his chain around my neck. I had to come back to Johannesburg to teach the next week, but he assured me that he would eat, drink and take his pills and we agreed that I would fetch him at the border again the next weekend. We even made an emergency arrangement should he lose the cellphone. I would find him at a petrol station where I had left him some years ago when we parted ways for a while on a summer holiday up north.
I phoned him daily, and he assured me he was taking his medication regularly and feeling much better. But I wasn't convinced. There was a history of Prince not doing this, treating life-saving medication like candy because it wasn't the HIV that was the threat to him, it was something communicated with a rolling of the eyes, something not right in his clan. But now that he had lost over 20kg in a month, I sensed he wasn't quite so certain about that.
We had to clear up the PCP so that he could get onto a drug trail I had organised.
Back at home I felt anxious and powerless, but things were as he wanted them and he was a 29 year old man. He could take the drugs wherever he was, he had said, and he needed to solve the problem at home. 'I know I'm sick with HIV,' he had said, 'but there's some reason why it's me.' African style - he believed it wasn't the virus that was the main problem, but some intangible force which determined that he should have it.
Some uncle of his phoned me on the Wednesday and told me he had been given the wrong medication. 'Come and take your boy back to South Africa.'
I was alarmed that Robert might be in some sort of critical situation, but on the Thursday I finally managed to get through to him. He was mystified by the uncle's call, and confirmed that I should fetch him on Saturday.
7 a.m. I set off from Pretoria where I had spent the night with friends so that I would already be closer to the highway and him. It is over 500km to the Beit Bridge border, and I took my time because Prince wanted to travel back in the cool of the evening.
Just before Louis Trichardt, which is more than two thirds of the way, the uncle got me on the phone. "Your boy is on a drip," he said. "We're going to treat him in Zimbabwe. You don't know what to do with TB in South Africa."
"But he hasn't got TB," I started. It was useless to protest over a bad cellphone connexion.
Now I had a problem. I parked the car under a tree in Louis Trichardt and cried for half an hour because I couldn't work out what to do. Robert was obviously not going to get to the border, and I had discovered as I left home that my passport had expired. This in addition to the lack of papers for my car.
It all seemed quite hopeless, but I realized that having come so far, I had to continue to the border (about another 100 km) and try my best to get to him.
Things have a way of falling into place when you need them. As I glided into a shaded parking bay outside the duty free shop, a young white man in Customs officer's uniform came up to me. 'That's a really sexy car you've got,' he said, referring to my modern, low-slung Renault Megane.
'Yeah,' I said, hardly able to believe my luck, 'and I've got a real problem getting it through the border.'
I explained my passport and papers handicaps to him and my urgent need to get to my sick friend in the Beit Bridge Hospital. 'Oh, that's not serious,' he said. 'Speak to Mr Chauke and get an emergency passport. I think it costs R130.'
In fact the passport only cost R35, and the border officials were remarkably helpful. But no luck with my car. The computer was down in the office that might have given me clearance for the vehicle. I had to go back to Messina, they said, where they would be on-line.
The Police Station in Messina, some 15km back from the border, was relatively easy to find, but not so the clearance. An officer met me at the entrance. Didn't I have Coke for him, it was so hot he said when he saw my cooler bag. I had some Bulgarian yoghurt for Robert, and he got one of those, and an apple. But it didn't sweeten him up enough to give me the paper I needed to get my car through the border.
Cars cannot be hired in Messina so I decided that I would walk across the border. The prospect made me a bit nervous as I'd be so vulnerable on the other side, but it was the only way to get to him.
With the thrush, Robert had developed a craving for soda water with orange squash, so I bought what I needed and set off. Soda in my shoulder bag with a change of clothing, my toiletries bag in the one hand, my wallet in the one pocket, cellphone in the other.
I paused at the beginning of the old bridge and read that Sir Alfred Beit's estate had donated the structure to the governments of the Union of South Africa and Southern Rhodesia as his contribution to promoting communications in Africa. Though I've crossed that bridge many times, I've never walked there before. I was suitably impressed by the plaque, and wished I'd brought my camera, but getting to Prince was my more pressing concern, so I trudged on only half appreciative of the full river and the magnificent bush along its banks. Neither did I laugh much with some locals lounging on the bridge who were amused by the sight of a white man walking between these two African countries.
Border formalities were relatively painless and quick, then I changed some money, found a taxi, and was soon at Beit Bridge's modest hospital. My young driver was very friendly and I felt safe with him, so asked him to return in an hour's time as by then I'd need to go to a hotel or back to the border.
When I entered the ward he lay in I was shocked to see him thinner and more feeble than before. His cheeks were as hollow as in that over-used expressionist painting, 'The Scream', and he was surrounded by women in desultory mode.
He was thrilled to see me, later told me he thought he never would again, and immediately dismissed the crones so we would have privacy. He told me that they wanted to treat him for TB, would not release him, but he wanted to come home with me.
The uncle arrived, and officiously repeated that in South Africa we don't know how to deal with this condition, and in Zimbabwe they know how to treat TB. I forget how many times I repeated, 'He has not got TB!'
Robert, clearly irritated, finally burst out with, 'Tell him the truth!' So I took the uncle outside and told him that he had tested HIV positive a year previously, and now had thrush and PCP.
With remarkable speed he changed his tune and told me, 'You can take your boy if you want to'. And within twenty minutes he was discharged, into a wheelchair and then the taxi I had organised to return.
Within another twenty minutes we were back over the bridge in the taxi, through the South African border, and seated in my car. I only caught a glimpse of the purples and pinks of the sunset as we crossed the bridge over the Limpopo. I was so elated at having pulled off what I had, retrieving my loved one from a death bed, nothing much else mattered.
Robert, too, was thrilled to be heading for Joburg, where we knew we had access to good doctors and treatment, and there was at least a chance we could save him. 'I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to you,' he said when we stopped for supplies in Messina.
I had driven since 7 a.m. and I do not have the world's best eyesight for night driving, so we stopped for a break at a hotel above Louis Trichardt. But Robert couldn't eat or sleep. His breathing was so shallow, and all he wanted was to consume the soda I had bought.
I believe it was 2.30 when we set off again. We soon reached the expansive toll-roads, and were at my home by mid-morning on Sunday.
I settled him in my spare room as my futon is too low for an invalid, and was touched to see the hope he displayed. He asked me to help into a carefully chosen outfit, some long denim shorts and a tank top he used to look so dashing in. Now he had to tighten his belt to its limit, and the top showed off his shrunken arms rather than the magnificent biceps he had had just a few months earlier.
He doggedly took the pills I pressed upon him, but couldn't eat much of the powdered food I mixed. All he wanted was soda as it eased the thrush. But then it filled up his stomach and he couldn't take food.
I couldn't raise our doctors over the weekend, so on Monday when he was in a worse state than ever, not having slept or eaten anything, I took him to casualty at the Helen Joseph Hospital, hoping they could feed and treat him intravenously.
Was that my mistake? They said they would admit him, and he'd be in ward nine. I could stay with him, or come back later. I opted for the latter, being the busy kind of person I am.
Foolishly, I was unprepared when the doctor phoned me less than two hours later to say he had passed away. I went straight to the hospital and he was still warm in his body bag, but the doctor said, 'As you know, we don't revive them'.
copyright by the author. all rights reserved.