A young woman walks across an empty courtyard in downtown Kingston. Her tiny eyes sink into her face as she smiles in greeting.
It&${esc.hash}39;s a calm, pleasant face - the new official face of Jamaica&${esc.hash}39;s HIV/AIDS community. Annesha Taylor, 26, is one of two people who have voluntarily revealed their HIV status under a new public awareness campaign launched by Jamaica&${esc.hash}39;s Health Ministry in September.
In a country where discrimination is common against people even suspected of being HIV-positive, it has been hailed as a brave move.
"My kids, my mother and people from my support group are my motivation to talk but also seeing and hearing about the experiences of my friends and other people and how people are ignorant about the disease," she said.
Taylor, an unemployed mother of three girls in Kingston&${esc.hash}39;s Arnett Gardens, has been living with the disease for the past five years. Women and girls represent the bulk of the 25,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. The Health Ministry estimates that about 15,000 of them don&${esc.hash}39;t even know their status.
Local reports are rife of people who have been abandoned by family and friends or even lost jobs. Taylor recalled the painful memory of an infected friend, also a mother, who was recently driven from her community, never to be heard from again.
Taylor herself has been lucky - her devoted mother stood by her through it all.
Taylor, along with Ainsley Reid, the other volunteer, now appears in local TV commercials and has done interviews using her real name and without the shield of a screen. She has spoken in churches, businesses and sensitisation sessions put on by local NGOs.
"Whenever anyone invites me to speak, I never say no. I say to them, &${esc.hash}39;Just tell me the time and I will come.&${esc.hash}39; Sometimes my daughter says to me, &${esc.hash}39;I don&${esc.hash}39;t like it, why do you have to do it?&${esc.hash}39; But I say to her, &${esc.hash}39;Someone needs to talk.&${esc.hash}39;"
Infected and abandoned by her boyfriend when she was eight months pregnant, she knows the pain of revelation. Her mother cried uncontrollably at the news that her only child was infected. She is still writing the letter that will tell her father.
Traumatised, Annesha tried to commit suicide using poison and by hanging.
More than 1,000 people develop AIDS annually in Jamaica, according to a ministry paper now before the House of Representatives. The document, which examines the performance of the National HIV/STI Control Programme, also said there had been 6,000 deaths since the onset of the epidemic in 1982.
AIDS workers say a number of factors contribute to the continued spread of HIV in Jamaica. These include poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and gender relations. They say the continued stigma associated with HIV/AIDS and discrimination against people living with the disease contribute to increased vulnerability by driving the epidemic underground.
But Annesha believes things are changing.
"It makes me feel good to know that I am helping someone. You know what would be good?" Her eyes light up and she leans forward. "If everyone that is HIV positive would come forward and show their face then in just three or four months Jamaica would look on it like any other sickness."
Glenda Andersson is a journalist with The Gleaner in Jamaica. This article is part of a series commissioned by AlertNet from journalists who have taken Reuters Foundation AIDS reporting courses. Any opinions are those of the author and not of Reuters.Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
