W

ijianto is skinny in build, but agile. He carries a backpack and a red and white flag. The most prominent item he carries is a small poster that reads: “Walking across the country to prevent the spread of HIV. Support those who are infected.”

The 33-year-old, who is also known as Gareng, has been eight months on the road, leaving on foot from Jakarta on Nov. 7, his birthday, to fight against the stigma of HIV, the thing that had taken almost everything from him.

He has walked to the eastern end of Java, crossed Bali, continued on to South Sulawesi, Papua, Maluku and then returned to North Sulawesi and eventually arrived in Gorontalo in late June.

“I’m human too. Why should I hide?” he asked The Jakarta Post when he was at a stop in Gorontalo.

As a person who lives with HIV, Wijianto said he first experienced discrimination when he learned in Jakarta in 2011 that he was infected. He had to be treated in hospital because of increasing weakness and he gradually lost his vision.

Nurses at the hospital in Jakarta spoke loudly in front of him, warning people to be careful of the disease he was suffering. There was even a nurse who refused to help him when he needed to buy food.

The most painful thing Gareng, who previously worked as a security guard in Jakarta, went through was that he was eventually abandoned by his wife.

“The stigma is a form of crime against humanity. People like us are just victims and this would worsen the stigma of HIV. More people living with HIV will close themselves off and HIV cases would become more difficult to discover,” he said.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated that there were about 690,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Indonesia last year.

Despite the number of deaths from HIV having dropped significantly from 40 percent in 2005 to 0.4 percent in 2015, the number of HIV infections in the country rose to 177,000 in 2015 from 150,296 cases in 2014, according to data from the Health Ministry.

Wijianto has stopped over in at least 62 cities, meeting a lot of people whose experiences and stories were similar to his.

During the visits he often provided information to schools and institutions of higher learning about the importance of providing moral support to people with HIV rather than avoiding them or treating them as outcasts.

By walking across Indonesia, Wijianto said he wanted to prove that people like him are still able to do extraordinary things, like others who are healthy. He often gathers with other HIV patients in the cities, motivating them to not be discouraged and live in isolation.

He stays any place he can: sometimes in the homes of people with HIV, in local agencies and at times in cheap lodgings. He has even set up a tent alongside the road.

To remain healthy, Gareng has increased his consumption of fruit. He also avoids instant food. He is definitely disciplined in taking antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which function to slow down and confine the HIV virus.

Throughout his journey, he saw the stigma on people with HIV in many forms. In a city in East Java, he once saw a community health clinic hanging a banner that reads “HIV/AIDS is a disgusting disease”.

Gorontalo AIDS Prevention Commission activist Ayundrawan Mohune acknowledged that the stigmatization of people living with HIV in Gorontalo was still quite strong.

Some civil servants who were infected with HIV were shunned immediately by their colleagues. “They even refuse to sit on a chair that was sat on by an infected person,” he said.