All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [143]
We started off with an excellent press conference announcing Salma’s arrival and her participation in our AIDS awareness campaign in conjunction with ALDO, the Canadian shoe and accessory company (which Salma handled seamlessly, like the pro she is). Then we visited a free AIDS clinic and hospice in one of Guatemala City’s toughest neighborhoods, La Terminal. The facility was run by Fundación Marco Antonio, one of PSI’s partners. I was delighted to find it spotlessly clean, the sheets matching, and the dozen patients living with HIV wearing new sleeveless flannel gowns. I crawled onto one bed, Salma sat on another, and we each listened to the stories of women who were dying of AIDS. Salma was a natural at the work, because she loves being with people and they know it. Being a native Spanish speaker and gifted translator further enriched the experience for all of us.
My new friend, a frail woman with a gaunt face, had two children living in Atlanta whom she hadn’t seen in ten years. Her grief surged up each time she mentioned them. They didn’t know she was HIV-positive, and she was afraid to tell them. Her family here in Guatemala had shunned her; her father-in-law threw away a cup after she drank from it. She spoke of the clinic as the only bright spot in her painful life, a place where she was accepted and loved. She talked about trying to be the best lead “cow”—an idiomatic expression—meaning she could influence other HIV-positive patients by keeping up a positive attitude of her own. But, she said, she was struggling. She had attempted suicide twice. In the few minutes we had together, I shared with her what I’d learned during my own hard times about the need to love myself and offered that there was much to love about herself.
As Salma and I were working our way through all the patients, we heard a commotion on the street below that signaled the arrival of another of my guests: Juanes, the Colombian rock superstar and one of the biggest celebrities in Latin America. Outside the clinic, Papa Jack’s security team had their hands full as word spread of Juanes’s arrival and thousands of Guatemalans filled the streets for a glimpse of him. He was a slender man with a boyish shock of brown hair and eyebrows that Frida Kahlo might envy. Juanes bounded up the stairs to greet everyone, then took out a guitar and gave an impromptu concert for the patients. Then, just as Salma and I had done, he sat down to talk with AIDS patients, hugging them in front of the cameras to transmit the powerful message that while the virus should be feared, the people who suffer from it should not. Later, he recorded a public service announcement for us that would reach millions of his fans with the message that real men use condoms to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Meanwhile, Salma and I raced back to the hotel to change clothes for our “private” audience with Oscar Berger, the president of Guatemala. We arrived at the palace to discover that he had pulled a big switcheroo on us. Instead of a substantial, behind-closed-doors talk with him about policy and programs, he staged a raucous press conference, apparently in order to preempt our own events and attract the lion’s share of attention for himself. Salma, Juanes, and I had to plaster polite smiles on our faces as President Berger herded us through a mob of reporters and camera crews toward a waiting dais.
Berger’s press conference coup had been elaborately planned—right down to the nameplates and water glasses and a conference room that was filled with government officials and invited guests. We all took our seats and had to roll with the circus as it unfolded, the price we apparently had to pay to bend the ear of the head of state. I was called on to make a speech, which I did; thank God I was already warmed up and had a little experience at being ambushed. The president then produced