JOAN COULD NOT IGNORE THE MISERY

It’s all too easy to feel powerless in the face of the Aids epidemic. What role can we as individuals play? The example of Joan Wessels, an ordinary woman determined to do something, shows all of us the way to go.

Wessels, a 33 year-old mother of two, has been employed as a teller at the Randburg post office for the past nine years. ‘In 1998 I felt I had to respond to what I saw on the news and read in the papers, and do something about Aids.” She says.

“So I approached my manager, and asked him if I could attend a training course run by ATIC. He agreed, provided that after the course I would spend every Wednesday educating my colleagues in various branches of the Post Office.”

Wessels’ transformation from teller to Aids educator and counselor was under way. She began teaching Post Office staff, also gaining knowledge and skills by attending a further course in counseling and six weeks of practical training.

Now she turned her attention closer to home. “After my six weeks of practical experience at ATIC, I visited Helen Joseph Hospital to find out if pre-and post-test counseling was in place. I discovered there was nothing available, due to lack of funding. So, with the help of Sister Roberts from the infection control clinic, I began work there as a voluntary counselor.”

‘”She has been incredible”, says Roberts. “She gave a tremendous amount of time with no incentives whatsoever.” Wessels continued to work for the Post Office one day a week. “I provided education and more and more counseling.” She says. “I found that the fear of being stigmatized was great; people preferred to come to see me at my office at Helen Joseph rather than at Randburg post office, in case any of their colleagues noticed.”

At the end of 1999 in her capacity as Communications Workers Union shop steward, Wessels was nominated to help negotiate an HIV/AIDS policy for the Post Office. This forced her to stop her counseling work at Helen Joseph temporarily, but this work is being continued by volunteers who’ve stepped in to fill the gap.

Policy setting out workers’ rights with regard to HIV and Aids was finalized. The Post Office commits itself to a progressive stance in terms of both education and treatment of employees who are infected.

There have been other positive moves at the Pose Office. 20 employees have been trained as peer educators, and provision has been made for Wessels to work with a social worker to extend counseling throughout the region.

Wessels’ latest target area is the community of Westbury, the area she grew up in. ‘The coloured community hasn’t had enough education around this issue,” she says.

At the beginning of this year, she was offered a rent-free office in a pharmacy in Industria West. This is her main base now. “I also do home visits in cases where people are too ill to come to me or fear being stigmatized. The problem is funding as I have to pay for all this work out of my pocket. “Sometimes I battle. When two of the people I counseled died, I had to raise money for the burial, as all the other family members were unemployed.” Wessels approached Kerr’s Funeral Directors, who have agreed to make an affordable funeral policy available to HIV positive people.