My Diary by Juliana Omatule-Ebikwo

Dairies more often are write ups which are usually not for ‘’our eye’’ but here Omolara, the diarist, writes of the sudden change of her life and environment within a one year period. First coming to terms with her mother’s death from an accident that left her and her only brother T-Boy in a state […]

Dairies more often are write ups which are usually not for ‘’our eye’’ but here Omolara, the diarist, writes of the sudden change of her life and environment within a one year period. First coming to terms with her mother’s death from an accident that left her and her only brother T-Boy in a state of devastation, having to cope with and manage her new HIV status to live with the disease for the rest of her life as an orphan.
Omolara views her situation  more like being caught in a spider web as she relates to readers the heart touching state  of people living with HIV/AIDs, a world where discrimination becomes the order of the day.
In the opening chapter the diarist introduces herself to readers, she tells them the age at which she starts to keep and write dairies. She defines her dairy as her ‘Memory bank, Recorder, Companion, Research booklet, Jotter, Hope and Aspiration, the Future, History, and Sum total of who I am’ (page 179).
Like all dairies, the book captures dates, months and events that we as readers consider top secret and should keep away from the public eye at all times, For instance, the diarist tells us of her love relationship with Aliyu. She confesses why she chose to publish her diary:
‘’It was not my intention then to make the contents of my dairy public but some important things happened in my life in the cause of the year covered here that made me decide to publish it’’(pg2).
Discovering her new status, she also battles with the reality of opening up to her family like aunty Shade and T-Boy. The diarist tries to place where she had contracted the disease but could almost not find any; could she have been infected from her first contact with Aliyu or from the hospital where she had received medication for tooth ache. She thought of the harshness of the society towards people living with HIV/AIDs and almost came to the conclusion that even T-Boy feels repulsed by her.
The diarist makes a bold choice to break the news of her status which we do not find as common in the society we live in even though the level of awareness has risen from what it used to be
The diarist refuses to be demoralized as she stands against all odd to seek a way forward. First she tells her aunty and then proactively discloses her status before her school and the world.
The diarist joins a social media network and also a community based network of people living with the disease while also educating herself and sharing with her audience the power of confidence and hope. She is inspired by the story of Job in the bible which she compares with her situation. Through the cause of her search for knowledge on how to manage the disease, she was able to relate to her readers the significance of CD4 Count. She also relates to her readers on how they could contract and develop STDs ‘’Opportunistic Infections’’ (OIs) when they fail to take their antiretroviral drugs seriously.
Omolara gives succor to the hopeless including helping Aliyu to fight back from being robbed of his good grades as opposed to that which he was awarded. She challenges people with the disease to openly disclose their status and also to take note of all necessary prescriptions before it eats them up and develop in to full blown AIDs.  She tells them to expect stigmatization and discrimination from anybody anywhere. (Pg140) She preaches freedom to live a normal life like others.
Just like the beginning where the diarist introduced herself as Omolara  Keinde    Briscobilo, she informs us of her new name as Fruitful Emmanuella  Briscobilo and shares her quote and that of other people of the world living with the disease on experience sharing, encouragement and hope.
 Exploring the themes, the novel’s theme runs through Hope vs. hopelessness, self-esteem, determination and courage, voice for the voiceless and burden versus freedom.
The author emphasizes God as a source of hope in a world where people treat others with absolute rejection and inequality. The book speaks on the need to be cautious of the kind of treatment we receive using object that might transmit the disease as she suspects from Dr. Ayefele.
Reading medical novel on this subject matter for the second time shows that medical fiction such as this can serve as a therapy for relieving people living with HIV/AIDS and other related diseases. The author’s motif for using a diary is unique,  having a style that has an epistolary element but I expect the author to have some of the entries in a hand writing form like we see in  our usual dairy.
However, I will recommend that the book be endorsed by the National Action Comittee on AIDS (NACA) and other agencies dealing  with people living with the disease because of the vast information contained in the novel.
I will encourage that medical authors explore other pressing medical issues such as Cancer, diabetes and other deadly disease including headache and Malaria as well to provide the society with the rich literature that is desperately lacking.