Project: WAKISO MEMORY WORK PROJECT 2009/10
Partners: SPAU, COOPERAID
Location: WAKISO
Matilda (not real name) is a single parent of 3 children who lives in a small village in Wakiso district. Matilda did not know her HIV status until the beginning of the SPAU Memory Work project in Wakiso in 2009. When she was first visited by a SPAU-trained community-based counsellor in September 2009, she was encouraged to go for an HIV blood test at the nearby regional government hospital, where she was diagnosed as being HIV positive. At the testing centre, Matilda received both pre- and post-test counselling. However, she spoke of the regular home-based counselling that she received from the SPAU-trained HIV/AIDS community-based counsellor as the best form of support and care that she had ever received in all her life because it kept her from (in her words:) “abandoning my children”. Over successive weeks, the SPAU-trained counsellor also helped to orient Matilda in various strategies in Memory Work.
Memory work can be defined as the deliberate setting up of a safe space in which to contain the telling of a life story. This space might be a room, the shade under a tree, a drawing or a map, or a memory box, basket or book. In therapeutic contexts, the scope of memory work is not necessarily restricted to the past, its purpose is often to deal with difficulties in the present, and its main orientation often tends towards planning and the future.
Matilda was also shown the purpose for keeping a memory book and a few months later, she began to write a Memory Book for the youngest of her children, a 6-year old boy. Matilda now believes that this Memory Book can be very helpful for her child’s future, especially in informing him about both of his parents’ heritage and her future plans for his life, even when she has passed on. Integrating practical income generation support with the Memory Work, the SPAU project has now supported Matilda to set up a small market stall by the roadside from which she now retails foodstuffs and charcoal from traders who are travelling to the towns along the Wakiso-Kampala highway. This activity is not simply a source of income for Matilda, it is also something that helps to keep her mind busy and active and away from the negativity of how she has been affected by HIV/AIDS. “I want to think about a bright future for my children” are Matilda’s parting words.
