When I was 5, I traced the fabric of my mother’s gumbezi as sunlight fell across the floor of my grandparents’ home in Mbare, the oldest high-density neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe. My mother sat beside me, her voice growing quieter each day, her body folding into stillness. I didn’t yet know what AIDS was. I only knew that something unspoken hung between us. My parents both died before they turned 40, their lives shortened by a virus shadowed by reticence and shame.
After a childhood shaped more by silence than answers, I was given the chance to study in the United States through a scholarship. There, I carved a path in HIV research. I studied while interning and later working with U.S.-based institutions engaged in efforts across the African continent.
