I've always managed to escape going to the annual World Aids Day Congress organised by the Aids Fund as I've either been performing or been in hospital (the latter being a drastic measure by all accounts).
How I longed to have had that excuse yesterday.
It became very clear, very early on that I, as a Gay man with HIV, had very little reason to be there at all. It was hardly a National congress in as much as the main concern of the head of the Aids Fund (and thereby all organisations present who are, by definition, dependent on the Aids Fund for survival) was reclaiming subsidy/funds for international projects.
The setting up of international projects, starting with 'Stop Aids Now' in the 90's has always been used as a way to pull in more and more funding.
More money, more people, more status - higher salaries, higher ambitions, higher risks.
Assuming that all was well in the homeland, the Aids Fund turned towards the rest of the world as it feared that the money well was drying.
I have to explain for readers from other countries that the Aids Fund is an unique institution in the world. Without going into too much detail it is also an uniquely Dutch way of doing things. A Government unaware and unsure of itself and its capabilities of confronting the Aids epidemic named the Aids Fund as the only conduit for Government funding.
Therefore, all institutions bearing the name Aids/HIV have one big daddy who they have to crawl to for money. One who's feeding hand they are unlikely to bite.
The congress was a stately dance. Ton Coenen, head of the Aids Fund, was a rather dishevelled Sun King surveying his royal court. The courtiers and sycophants bowed low and scraped the floor before him. Prostrate they lay, unashamedly battling for favour. Tired and weary workers, obviously there because they 'had to be', counting the minutes till the bell.
International institutions, Dance4Life, workers from Sudan, Burkina Faso .... tales to tell that I/We had already heard a few times too many in Vienna at the Global Aids Conference a few months ago.
This was no National Congress about the National situation.
No.
This was a National Congress about the National Aids Fund.
