Perry

After nearly a lifetime of using their services, Perry left The AIDS Support Organisation last month after the homegrown group lost all of its U.S. funding. She is struggling to adjust.

Perry is an impish 26-year-old, who speaks softly but favors big hair and a bold print. She has agreed to speak to me, but only if she can use a pseudonym. Her parents don’t know that she is a sex worker. She intends to keep it that way.

We meet at an art center on the edge of Gulu, northern Uganda’s largest city. Thatched huts are scattered around the expansive garden, providing some respite from the late afternoon sun. As we settle into plastic chairs, she tells me that she is grateful someone wants to hear her story.

We felt like this was going to be a tough situation for us. We didn’t have any hope of anyone coming to maybe ask our opinion or talk to us. That was not easy.

The “this” she is talking about are the funding cuts to TASO, which was the largest HIV service organization in Gulu and the surrounding region. It provided a range of services, including community outreach, prevention tools and the anti-retroviral treatment that Perry relied on.

Born with HIV to two parents who are also HIV-positive, Perry tells me she has been on treatment since before she can remember. Taking the daily pill is as much a part of her morning routine as brushing her teeth.

She had to abandon her nursing training when she ran out of money and turned to sex work in 2019, which she confided to her counselor at TASO Gulu. In turn, he reinforced how critical it was that she adhere to the treatment. The pills would keep the virus in check, ensuring she did not pass it on to any of her clients.

They told me to protect the other people. To just keep suppressed and not transmit to other people.

The clinic made it as easy as possible for her to maintain the treatment.

Most times they would bring it up to my place where I stay. I would always call them. They had a bike, and a man would bring it up to my place.

It arrived six months’ supply at a time. Until, in the days after Trump slashed U.S. aid, the services stopped.

At TASO Gulu, they stopped delivering drugs up to the places of convenience.

After her counselor shared some of the details of the funding interruption, Perry grudgingly transitioned to the nearby Gulu Regional Referral Hospital. She didn’t need that uncertainty. Since the hospital’s programs were financed by the Ugandan government, they were unaffected by Trump’s cuts. They are essentially the only services that remain in Gulu.

Leaning across the table for emphasis, she tells me it has not been going well. At the hospital, HIV care is delivered through the outpatient, or OPD, ward.

The line, it is a very long queue. So you have to sit and wait. Maybe sometimes we are in a rush and you don’t want to be seen. Then you have to sit in OPD. It is quite inconvenient.

Actually, it’s more than inconvenient, she explains.

Maybe someone knows me. Then they’re looking at me. You know she’s here picking her medication. That stigmatizes a lot.

Though the United States is an ocean away, she feels like Trump has succeeded in turning her into outcast. Though has been living with HIV for 26 years, this is the first time she has felt that way.

She tells me she plans to continue her treatment so that the virus will remain suppressed. But she knows that won’t be true of everyone.

People are going to be non-suppressed because currently picking drugs from the facilities has become very hard.