I finished reading this book a week ago today, and I’m still not sure how to write about it. I found it deeply moving, but it may still be too soon to put my thoughts and feelings into words, and anything I write here can only scratch the surface.
Jonny Steinberg has packed so much into the 326 pages of Three-Letter Plague (published in the U.S. under the title Sizwe’s Test). He writes about his own literal and figurative journey to try to learn how Médecins Sans Frontières had introduced HIV testing and anti-retroviral medications to one of the poorest, most rural region of South Africa. He provides current and historical background not only of the region but also of the country and the disease. He tells the personal story of Sizwe, a young man he hires as interpreter and guide, noting his personal experience of watching people die of AIDS, of helping friends and family who are diagnosed with HIV, of deciding whether he should be tested himself. Late in the book, Steinberg relates his own prejudices and fears, realizing that he and Sizwe aren’t as different as he had thought.
Any book about South Africa is necessarily going to be about race. Black people distrust the white doctors and nurses, some believing they spread the disease with their needles as a way of controlling and eradicating black people, others believing that disease and misfortune are spread by demons cast by jealous enemies, demons that modern medicine can’t touch. White doctors and nurses believe black people should fall all over themselves to thank their white saviors, that they’re committing mass suicide by adhering to suspicions and superstitions and traditional medicine. Black people say their lives would be destroyed if families and neighbors knew their status. White doctors contend the only way to fight the disease is in the open for all to see. Neither side understands the other, nor do they much care to. Progress is frustratingly slow for all concerned, but at least at the time this was written, they remain too stubborn to move any faster.
I have to confess that I caught myself succumbing to that same condescending attitude of “Look at how primitive and backward these poor rural Africans still are in the 21st century.” Uggggghhh. I’m still embarrassed by that reaction, as it confirmed my first-world snobbery, but then I realized that there are plenty in the U.S., including many of my own relatives, who believe in literal demons that cause disease and misfortune. There are plenty in the U.S. who are suspicious of the motives behind vaccines, from those who claim vaccines are just a money grab by the pharmaceutical companies to the religious who believe only God can heal and prevent disease to the conspiracy theorists who say the government uses them for mind control and tracking and eugenics.
One of my favorite moments came when Steinberg accompanied Sizwe to vote in the national election. When Sizwe and other learned that Steinberg wasn’t voting because he would have had to return to Johannesburg, they were appalled and even a bit angry. Steinberg admits here to his own privilege in taking this right for granted, realizing that “to be black is to have been robbed and violated, and to vote is an act of retrieval.” My own voting history is spotty, having succumbed to the privileged attitude of “There’s no real difference between most of the candidates, and my vote doesn’t matter anyway.” I’ve only recently realized how vital it is for everyone to exercise that right, to fulfill that duty, and this was a powerful reminder.
One thing I can say for certain: Jonny Steinberg is a hell of a writer. I bought this book in Johannesburg a few years ago during my first visit to South Africa, bought it because it seemed like a very South African subject, bought it because of my interest in public health, but I knew nothing of the author and honestly had low expectations. As with Yewande Omotoso’s The Woman Next Door, I was first pleasantly surprised and then horrified by my own prejudices. I can only say that I resolve to be better and to do better, and that I look forward to reading more from these and other authors I haven’t yet discovered.
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