"In Switzerland, I Wouldn’t Have to Be Afraid"
Espérance Ndyishimiye once cared for others living with HIV in Burundi. Now, the nurse fears for her own future. Espérance wears her dark hair cut short, large earrings, and a bright red sweater. She greets you with a cheerful laugh. You wouldn’t guess how frighteningly uncertain her future is, or how fragile the ground she stands on has become.
Portrait by Claudia Langenegger
The 48-year-old nurse fled Burundi two and a half years ago. Back home, she headed the HIV ward in the public hospital of the capital, Gitega. “I had a good life, with a permanent job. I wasn’t rich, but I wasn’t poor either,” she says. And yet, fleeing became her only option.
Her situation was complex: Espérance wanted to give her father — who had been shot in the chaos of the 1993 civil war — a dignified burial. That made her a target of ethnic hostility. “It was like I had provoked the Hutu,” she says. “All I wanted was a grave for my father, who was buried like an animal in the earth.” Espérance, a Tutsi, was threatened, assaulted, and attacked on the street. “I was terrified. Eventually, I knew: I have to get out.” Out of Africa’s smallest state — one of the poorest countries in the world.
Espérance has been living with HIV since 2000. In Burundi, only three people know her seropositive status: her mother, her younger sister, and her 24-year-old daughter. “I couldn’t even tell my colleagues at the hospital,” she says. “Anyone with HIV is rejected and shunned — by family, at work, and by society.”
Things are different in Switzerland. Here, Espérance speaks openly about HIV. “During an integration course on sexual health in Bern, I came out and said people could ask me anything about it.” She soon became active in HIV prevention, giving workshops in asylum centers and at the University of Applied Sciences in Biel, and working as a mediator with Aids-Hilfe Bern.
But in March, her asylum request was rejected. “Going back is not an option,” she says. “That would mean death.” It is highly uncertain whether Burundi will have access to antiretroviral medication in the future — the end of U.S. funding for UNAIDS hits the country hard. Either way, Espérance will no longer have access to treatment there: she cannot afford private insurance, and she would only receive public health coverage if she were employed by the state again. But the government is at war with her — she won’t be rehired.
Postscript: At the time of publication, Espérance had been forced to leave Switzerland.