Reflections on the activities of the support group in House Number 233

In the chapter, Reflections on the activities of the support group in House Number 233, Wangari Muthuki writes about an HIV/AIDS support group. She focuses on group dynamics and how members produce—notably through sexualised humour and innuendo—a sense of community and fun that enables them to deal with HIV/AIDS and its stigma. According to members, they could not talk to family and friends about the inter-racial friendships they had established in the group because they would be seen as unusual or strange. One black woman—whose neighbours said she was a ‘prostitute’ because she was friendly to a white man—sustains this illusion rather than reveal that they met at the support group. Wangari notes that black women's voices were more muted than the white men's. One white woman who spoke about her depression was ‘rebuked in good humoured ways’ by the white men, perhaps because this was seen as undermining the group’s focus on living positively with HIV/AIDS and its emphasis on fun and humour as a way of promoting this.

Reference:
Muthuki, Wangari. 'Reflections on the activities of the support group in House Number 233', in Rob Pattman and Sultan Khan (Eds.), Undressing Durban (Durban: Madiba Press, 2007), pp. 382-388.