HIV-positive and suffering from TB

Buhle's story

Buhle - at eight she's HIV-positive, suffering from TB and physical abuse.

"My mother got a stomach ache and she died. I remember going to the funeral. I was six. I was very sad. My father said I would live at his other wife's house. I was living with my mother in Simunye [in the eastern Lowveld] with my grandmother and my aunt, but not my father. I was coughing, my chest hurt. They took tests at the clinic. I felt bad. They said it was TB.

"At my stepmother's house, he had four girls and five boys.

The children slept on a bed in the bedroom. I slept on a mat in the kitchen. My stepmother never liked me from the start. She was angry all the time when she spoke to me, and called me names. She didn't give me any food. She gave all the children plates of food, but not me. I told my father I wasn't getting any food. He said that wasn't nice, but nothing changed, I didn't get food. My stepmother forgot a lot to take me to the clinic [for TB treatment].

"My stepmother would beat me. She said I did something, but I didn't do it.

She would beat me with a long stick. The skin would get cut, and I would bleed. I used to cry, I asked her to stop, I said I was sorry I did those things. But I hadn't done anything.

"The police came to collect me from school. My teacher heard me cough. She asked me if I was sick. The head teacher said I was very sick. The police came with me to Jacaranda House. They told me I'd be staying with the [Carmelite] sisters, I'd have food. No one would beat me.

"When I grow up, I want to be a nurse.

My godmother at Jacaranda House is a nurse. Her name is Sister Margaret. I take four pills [her TB medication] in the morning, and four pills at night. I have a special box that says 'Morning and Night'. Sister Margaret gave it to me."

Jacaranda House is a halfway home for abused girls in Swaziland's second city of Manzini, run by Carmelite nuns. It is a complex of three houses, which can accommodate as many as 40 disadvantaged children.