HIT BACK
DJULI PAMUNGKAS, Sindo Jabar

Bam, bam,bam!
Jab, jab, hook!

The sound produced by a series of punches hitting punching bags is repeatedly heard competing with the shouts of a trainer. Eva Dewi just wakes up from her daydreaming, her hand wraps become messy. She suddenly recalls something from the past. She was supposed to have completed the warming up by running encircling the boxing ring for twice. Instead, her mind travelled back to the end of 2010 when a doctor in Klinik Teratai Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung revealed that she was HIV positive.

Needle sharing practice when consuming heroine made Eva an ODHA, or people living with HIV or AIDS. When diagnosed, she was into her third pregnancy. She felt guilty. The doctor’s decision to give her a Caesarean section to deliver her baby confused her parents.

For more than two years, Eva kept it private, instead, she told others that she only suffered from anemia. Her habit of asking for the help of her younger sister, a pharmacist, to get prescription drugs eventually broke the secret. Her sister was stunned when finding out antiretroviral drugs written in the prescription while her parents were downhearted. It did not stop there. Her husband family did not want to see her anymore. Her husband divorced her. Taking care of three children under such a health condition was quite tough.

Making friend with someone who also frequently consulted with Klinik Teratai in early 2013 has led her to rediscover the meaning of life in Rumah Cemara. This place provides a so called “Sport for Development’ training to realize a mission for an “Indonesia Without Stigma”. Eva chooses boxing, a tough sports program. Eva does this to prove that it is not true that ODHA can do nothing.

After three years practicing boxing, Eva’s uppercut could make other boxers run out of breath as it hits straight to any opponent’s heart. However, she has no ambition to become a professional boxer. Her biggest dream is to get a recognition and to be equally treated.

HIV is really mean. But the stigma is ever meaner. All Eva wants is to prove that being an ODHA is not identical with being weak. That’s why she prefers to put the wraps to her hand, put the boxing gloves on, and finally hit back the negative labeling.