Still, such moments were shared, and I have cherished each of them. Where it mattered most, Rra Nametso served as the chair of the National AIDS Council during my stint as the public relations officer at the then-National AIDS Coordinating Agency. Our quarterly interactions focused on the serious picture of a pandemic that threatened survival, and how a national response was mooted. There were senior government officials and representatives of international NGOs in the fight against HIV for him to have noticed me in the room. But it was here that a graduate from the Oxbridge institution left a lasting impact on the scholar I became. Before joining NACA in 2005, I spent my youthful exuberance in the news trenches, gathering and reporting facts about this epidemic, firstly, at the defunct Okavango Observer, and later at Mmegi.
Botswana of the mid-1990s and early 2000s was besieged. The HIV national prevalence ranged between the 25th and 30th percentiles. Every household lost a member to AIDS, every family cared for at least one full-blown AIDS patient, and in every direction, everyone knew relatives, close friends, workmates, schoolmates, churchmates and neighbours living with HIV. Building the public relations unit of such an agency from nothing was a challenge, as much as it was rewarding to design communication platforms for HIV prevention information. To secure our lives, people should be informed.
