A tribute to Suzana Murni
Chris Green's article about the late Suzana Murni (The Jakarta Post Aug. 23) combines compassion for the AIDS activist and clarity about the intimidating killer scourge. It puts a human face on the mind-boggling numbers of 40 million infected and 20 million lives HIV/AIDS has claimed worldwide.
I did not know Suzana personally but I know some of her remarkable writings.
They include three booklets primarily for people living with HIV/ AIDS underscoring her dedication to peer group support. The titles of these manuals are Hidup dengan HIV/AIDS (Living with HIV/AIDS), Terapi Alternatif (Alternative Therapy), and Pasien Berdaya ( The Empowered Patient). She has authored also several powerful papers in idiomatic English she presented in international forums in her short but energetic life.
Suzana's articles on AIDS stand out because they are different. They are not by a commentator examining a subject but by a person experiencing it and exposing that experience.
Her inside-out rather than outside-in approach in explaining AIDS penetrates readers with the darkness, loneliness, anxiety, and anger people living with HIV/AIDS have to deal with daily. This is a fact the public at large is not aware of, moreover sensitized to.
Her eloquent address before the Sixth International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Melbourne October 2001 is no exception. She advocates greater involvement of people with HIV/AIDS and the creation of an enabling environment.
"Positive people are seldom seen as one of the experts, although we can tell you about the reality of HIV probably better than most people," she says.
We need everybody to listen, not deciding what is needed for us but let us decide what we need.
A touching line in her speech is when Suzana underscores her unswerving intent not to let a virus get in her way to lead as fulfilling a life as possible: as a working woman and as a mother of a two-year-old son, Ariel.
"I want to raise him and take care of him myself as long as I can. I want to live long enough to take him to school, see him grow, take him to interesting places."
I visited Suzana's Jakarta home on an August afternoon to offer my condolences. Pak Fadlan Fadlil, Suzana's father, showed me Suzana's tastefully furnished bedroom and adjoining den. Shelves on the walls were lined with neat rows of perhaps 200 books. They include works from Ann Rice and Hemingway and several titles on women's rights.
"Suzana has read them all," Pak Fadlil remarked. The statement stunned and shamed me. A person dying from AIDS-induced lymphoma was not only speaking out for people with AIDS and raising a baby boy to boot but also managed time to read books.
WARIEF DJAJANTO BASORIE, Depok, West Java