Nyasha Mutunhu is a petite 25-year-old with a smattering of freckles and large brown eyes behind small black glasses. She wears her hair in locks bound in a beige scarf that matches her flowered dress.
"I'm kind of a nomad," Mutunhu says with a smile. "My locks are my roots. I carry them with me wherever I go — they're symbolic, my strength."
Born in Wisconsin and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe, Mutunhu needs that strength. On St. Thomas, she is the HIV/AIDS prevention specialist at the local chapter of the American Red Cross.
She recently visited her father in Harare, after attending the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.
Getting to participate in the conference was a dream come true for the young activist. She couldn't afford to visit Africa on her own, let alone attend the conference. "I applied for a scholarship about nine months ago, and I just learned I'd been accepted last month," she said.
She had written an essay on why she wanted to attend the conference and how she would use the information she acquired there. "I would e-mail them," she said, "but I didn't learn anything until July, when they sent me a ticket along with a letter of acceptance."
Her digs in Durban, Mutunhu said, weren't like those of many of the 13,000 or so delegates attending the conference. The scholarship students were housed in dorms outside the city. "Not really the chocolate-on-your-pillow-every-night sort of place," she said.
Although Mutunhu was thrilled to be at the conference, she said, she was appalled by the controversial stance of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who contended in and address to the gathering that poverty and malnutrition, not HIV, cause AIDS. Hundreds of the delegates, Mutunhu said, walked out on his speech.
The World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimate that 34.3 million adults worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 1999. Of that number, an overwhelming 24.5 million are in sub-Saharan Africa. On a per capita basis, the Caribbean region is second, with an estimated 360,000 adults infected.
According to an article in the May 2000 issue of Scientific American magazine, "Care for a Dying Continent," Mbeki's government has refused to distribute the AIDS drug AZT to pregnant women, despite study findings that the drug greatly reduces the transmission of the disease. AIDS activists such as Mutunhu have said that Mbeki's actions discourage preventive measures to control the disease, such as the use of condoms.
Mutunhu is trying to encourage the use of condoms, HIV/AIDS testing, educational outreach programs and other measures in the territory to stem the spread of the virus.
The biggest stumbling block to HIV testing, she said, is that the territory has "confidential" but not anonymous testing, which discourages the public from coming forward. Because of fear of recognition, many people go off-island for testing. The HIV/STD clinics on St. Thomas and St. Croix are in public health complexes, and many people are reluctant to go there for fear of being seen, she said.
Some nights Mutunhu attends the University of the Virgin Islands, where she is taking social psychology couses. Other evenings she applies her experience with both psychology and HIV/AIDS prevention as she visits the island's brothels.
The brothel visits are part of her outreach program to offer information and advice and to provide free condoms. An assistant from the Dominican Republic goes with her to help with language translation, as many of the women are from that nation. If any of them want HIV testing, Mutunhu arranges it.
Statistics show that in the St. Thomas-St. John district heterosexual contact is the most prevalent means of transmitting HIV/AIDS, accounting for 32 percent of cases. Heterosexual women are particularly at risk, Mutunhu said, if their partners have more than one other sexual partner. These figures are from the 1999 V.I. Surveillance Report by the Department of Health.
"AIDS covers every spectrum of society," Mutunhu said. "It's not just drug use and homosexuality — it's cultural mores, attitudes and denial." Challenging the attitude that "it couldn't happen to me, or anyone I know," is one of the toughest battles AIDS activists encounter.
Mutunhu said she remembered being in Zimbabwe at about age 15 and hearing people treat the disease as "nothing… something that happens to gays." And that attitude is what she sees now in the territory. "It's frightening," she said, to see it happening all over again.
The statistics are sobering. AIDS is the leading cause of death of black men and Hispanic women in the territory, and the seventh leading cause of death overall, according to the V.I. Report. The Caribbean has the second-highest infection rate worldwide after sub-Saharan Africa, the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS reported.
According to the 1999 V.I. Surveillance Report, 15 percent of Virgin Islanders diagnosed with AIDS and 12 percent of those infected with HIV were homosexual men. However, only 6 percent of the population was tested in 1999, making the statistics unreliable, Mutunhu noted.
The report states that the data are "under-reported, and should be treated with caution."
Another of Mutunhu's projects is holding meetings for homosexual men on St. Thomas and St. John to offer information and assistance, as well as help for men infected with HIV. The meetings also provide a forum for people to share concerns about homophobia in the community, she said.
She said one such meeting recently went "really well," although only three men attended. "I wish there had been more, but it's three times more than the first meeting," she said, saying she was not discouraged.
"We talked for about an hour and a half, and we got lots of quality information out," she said. "We're just starting."
Mutunhu showed her determination at a small but moving World AIDS Day candlelight vigil last December at Emancipation Garden. One by one, a handful of people arose, each holding a candle, and paid tribute to loved ones lost to AIDS.
"Each generation has its war," Mutunhu told them. "The battle against AIDS is ours."
