As the 16th International AIDS Conference comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to wrap things up with a list of highlights from the past eight days since I arrived in Toronto. It’s been one of the liveliest, jam-packed weeks of my life, just as I knew it would be. Being the ravenous sort that I am, I wish I could have spent less time writing stories in the media centre and more time listening in on sessions or soaking up the youth events. Still, I’ve tried to take the opportunity to soak up as much as I can, and hereby present to you Mark’s Top 10 Toronto AIDS Conference moments…
1) Listening to Beatrice Were’s call to action for African leaders and women during a discussion on the failures of the ABC Prevention model in Africa: I’ve heard Beatrice speak several times before and am never less than moved deep inside by the strength and resilience of this woman. Beatrice represents the people that the moralistic leaders of the world continue to neglect: she was a monogamous, faithful married woman who practiced the ABC model…and still contracted HIV. Her closing of the panel brought a long standing ovation, and when challenged by an American man during the Question and Answer session over the statistical evidence behind her argument, successfully threw the questions back upon him, providing her own statistics and winning another booming round of applause.
2) Speaking to Frika Chiu Iskander throughout the conference: Frika, a beautiful young Indonesian positive woman who won the thousands-strong crowd over during the opening ceremony as the youth speaker (only to have media focus—of course—on Bill and Melinda Gates), is a real pocket dynamo of an activist. It’s also lovely to meet fellow South-east Asian/Australasian people involved in the AIDS fight.
3) Talking to Watema and Acana from Uganda about the SPIT Youth Movement: Since an early ago, growing up on the gravel-tops of Western Australia, I have always loved street basketball, and I have grown to love the universal language that positive, conscious hip hop provides for my generation. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn that these two entrepreneurial streetballers and rhyme-spitters from Kampala, Uganda are creating an HIV movement that combines these two art forms with prevention methods and youth communication. They even performed a freestyle for me upon my request.
4) The Treatment Action Campaign’s staged protest at a major press conference: There are fewer more beautiful stories in the AIDS movement then that of Zackie Achmat and the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, which successfully forced its government—through raw grit, heart, and fury at its government’s neglect—to scale up access to ARVs. I often see South Africa as the soul of the activist movement, and even as cases begin to escalate in India and other Asian population centers, for me, South Africa remains the moral compass of the movement. Nobody more so than Zackie Achmat, a positive Indian-South African doctor who refused life-saving medication until all South Africans had access to the drugs, represents this movement. Combine this with the zest for life—singing and dancing flow out of the actions of TAC like momentous Neruda-evoking love poems, and you have an inspirational movement. In particular, Sipho Mthati, a young, full-voiced woman who has captured many peoples’ hearts, articulates the needs of positive people with an eloquence, intelligence, and beauty that few can muster. It makes me choke up simply thinking about what she represents to people back in her home country. But her command over the press conference yesterday, where she astounded journalists and others with her understanding and power over all of the issues raised, was at times breathtaking and never more than affirming of the will and intelligence of the everyday human being: galvanized and mobilized towards a noble goal.
5) The Global Village in general: on the whole, this room was just the most wonderful, chaotic collision of humanity I’ve ever seen assembled in one place. Typing away in the media center, one was constantly overhearing song, music, drumming, and other aural inspirers flowing out of the Village. It is as if the whole of Grand Central Station in New York City was locked together, shaken up and down, and all those inside happened to be committed to ending the AIDS epidemic in a hundred different ways and by supporting every conceivable group. It was a welcome change from the dry, cerebral nature of many of the sessions, and breathed a huge gust of life into proceedings.
6) Paul Farmer’s Photographs: One of the true ‘rock stars’ of the AIDS fight, Dr. Farmer used to fly from his post at the medical faculty in Harvard to Haiti, illegally carrying over AIDS drugs in his suitcase for the many who need them in this suffering Caribbean nation. He’s also a brilliant writer and a man whose presence encourages all of us to put our actions where our words are. He showed several pictures of people at clinics from his health facilities in Haiti and Rwanda that I found particularly affecting, as I’m sure hundreds of others did during the session.
7) The ‘Come As You Are’ Sex Workshop: Come As You Are is a local sex store in Toronto. Their candid, this-is-how-it-works, sex workshop in the Global Village was at times humorous, eye-opening, and entirely maturely-led. For many of the participants who come from societies in which sex remains a largely taboo subject, I think it really broke new ground for them. Plus, I got a free pocket vibrator, and those are always handy to have around.
8) Seeing and laughing with friends from around the world once again: Working on HIV in Washington D.C. can sometimes be an isolating experience. It’s necessary for the soul and worldview-affirming to meet and reunite with brilliant AIDS activists from Egypt, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Botswana, Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Guatemala and so on. I am constantly reminded of the universality of human suffering, of human feeling, and human spirit, as we work together to finally send this terrible pestilence into the annals of our history as rapidly as possible.
9) Asking Peter Piot to wear a giant condom suit: Ever one to throw on the occasional giant phallic outfit, I thought it would be only suitable for us as youth reporters to ask him whether he would don such a suit to fight stigma, bouncing his way up to the microphone during the opening ceremony before the thousands of participants. He declined, in his endearing slightly socially awkward, over-educated Belgian doctor sort of way. The podcast is up on the site if anyone wants to catch it; we got a good laugh out of his response, and I’m sure he did too.
10) The Empancipation of Sovhik: I first bumped into this little Indian fashion designer on the night that we both got in. He was very lost, very tired, and told me that Toronto was the first time he’d stepped out of Calcutta. I helped him back to the dorm, and then had the chance to cover his fashion show, which had a jam-packed youth pavilion audience whooping and cheering. He then showcased the first Bengali music video to positively highlight gay male relationships. Afterwards, he was surrounded by a flock of eager journalists and enthusiastic viewers of his eye-catching work. I could tell that he was absolutely loving it. Sovhik’s rise from lost young man, fresh off of the plane, to rising designer and queer activist is in essence, the dream of the AIDS and social justice movement writ large. I know that he will return home a more empowered, more confident young man, and I believe and trust that his is only one in a sea of similarly life-affirming, positive stories coming out of this momentous gathering.
