When Babalwa Mbono was pregnant with her second child, she went to a clinic in Cape Town, South Africa, for a check-up. She left with an HIV diagnosis.

Babalwa was shocked—she’d tested negative when she was pregnant with her first child just a few years earlier—and concerned for herself and her unborn baby. “I worried that my baby would be born with HIV, and that I wouldn’t live long enough to care for him or her,” she said. “I felt lost and afraid, with no idea what to do.”

Luckily, the clinic soon connected her with mothers2mothers, an Africa-based organization that matches pregnant women with who have recently been diagnosed with HIV with someone from their crew of so-called Mentor Mothers, women who have been through the same thing. They offer advice and counseling, plus information on live-saving antiretroviral treatments that can prevent moms from passing HIV on to their babies. “A Mentor Mother is someone who understands you, she’s been in your shoes, and she can give you guidance by drawing from her own experience,” Babalwa says.

More than 7 million people in South Africa are living with HIV. Since it was founded in 2001, M2M has reached nearly 2 million people across seven African countries, and virtually eliminated the rate of transmission between mothers and children in its program. Among M2M’s clients, the mother-to-child transmission rate is just 1.6 percent—well below the 5 percent benchmark set by the United Nations program on AIDS. Babalwa’s baby was born HIV free, and she herself is mainly healthy today. She now works with M2M as a Mentor Mother.

Babalwa’s experience taught her that conversation is crucial—a lesson she’s putting to good use now that the baby she was carrying in the clinic that day is a high school girl named Anathi. The way Babalwa sees it, Anathi has already dodged HIV once, she doesn’t want her to acquire it now. That means talking about HIV and contraception and, yes, sex, with her teenaged daughter. A lot.

That was awkward at first, but they say that as time went on something unexpected happened: It brought them closer together. They don’t just talk about HIV now, they talk about all kinds of things.

Babalwa and Anathi were in New York recently to speak at the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of mothers2mothers. We sat down with them for a three-way conversation.

PHOTO: Courtesy mothers2mothers

Glamour: Tell me about when you learned that you were HIV positive.

Babalwa: I went for prenatal care at one of our clinics when I was pregnant with my second born, which is this little girl, Anathi. When I tested positive for HIV I was shocked, honestly, and I was quite angry as well because at that time I was married and I was not expecting that. My sister was HIV positive and passed on three years earlier, so that’s what came into my mind when I was tested—death. I will follow her.

At the same time, I was also thinking of this baby that I’m carrying which could be infected, and what could happen after she was born. Fortunately, I was referred to mothers2mothers, where I learned to take my treatment and I learned about HIV stigma and discrimination and how to disclose my status to my parents, to my family, to my husband, which was a challenge.

Glamour: How do you think your own HIV status has affected the way you talk to your kids about HIV, sex, and contraception?

Babalwa: When Anathi’s older brother was a boy, it was not easy for me to talk to him about HIV because I did not have much information. Now, with the empowerment that I’ve got in terms of knowledge and the strength that I’ve gained being supported and living life positively and thinking positively, I am able to carry that baton and hand it to my children. I am able to educate them with the knowledge that I have on HIV. I cannot make decisions for them, they have to make their own—but with the knowledge that I have given them I hope they will be able to make their own good decisions about their lives.

Glamour: Is this something you guys talk about all the time, part of an ongoing conversation?

Anathi: It’s not all of the time, but I know it’s every weekend, because every weekend I go out with my friends, and it always happens then. For her I think it kind of gets difficult to accept that I have friends and I have my own time. I am a young girl that wants to explore.

Babalwa: This is where this conversation about HIV and condom use and taking care of themselves comes in, because you want to reinforce that in your daughter, wherever she goes, whatever she does, she must think of that.

In our culture, when girls get to a certain age the mother takes them to the clinic for contraceptives, but they don’t have this conversation, they don’t explain why they should be using the contraceptives. And then you see the girls stop using the contraceptives, and they end up pregnant or with HIV. So that’s why I’m always educating her, every weekend.

Glamour: Tell me about when you disclosed you HIV status to Anathi.

Babalwa: I was very open about HIV through my work with mothers2mothers, but I still was not ready to tell her. But last year she was about to start high school, and when I looked at the curriculum I saw that HIV and AIDS was part of the curriculum, so I thought that this was my opportunity to talk about my status.

Anathi: I was on the phone with my brother so my brother who was telling me about this new phone he got and I was so excited, so when my mother called and said she wanted to talk to me about something I was like, it can wait until later. But she was like, no, you need to hear this. So I got nervous then.

When she told me I wasn’t really shocked because my brother and I have gone through and watched YouTube videos of her talking about HIV, but we thought maybe it was just for her work. Hearing from her face that she was HIV positive got me really hurt and got me into a bad space.

When you find that your parent is HIV positive you get that feeling of just being scared to open up to another person and to tell that person what is going on. What if her status is going to be everywhere? What if everyone is going to know that she’s HIV positive?

Glamour: A lot of the reason mothers and daughters are afraid to have conversations around boys and sex is because it’s awkward, and I feel like you guys don’t have a lot of awkwardness, maybe because you were forced to have this big conversation about HIV. What do you think?

Anathi: We talk about [HIV and contraception] all the time. And every time she starts talking about it, I’m just like, OK it’s fine, it’s fine, I won’t do it, and then I leave as fast as I can, because I know that she’s going to talk about it over and over again.

Babalwa: She doesn’t understand that for me it’s not about making her feel tired of me it’s just sort of reinforcing that information that please look out, be careful. That is the message.

Anathi: Mothers don’t get that whenever we talk we might seem like we don’t care but then it gets us thinking more about it: What if this thing happens to me? What if I am going to be the one that experiences it and shares my experience with my children one day? She thinks that if I’m laughing I don’t take it seriously, but I do.

Babalwa: And I can say that after we talked things have changed.

Anathi: I started realizing that boys are a waste of time, boys will ruin your future, so I just got away from them. It kind of made me see things differently.

Glamour: Anathi, do you have advice for your mom or other moms about how they should talk to their kids, what would it be?

Anathi: Well you must grab your daughter or grab your son and sit with them and have a chat, because if you are not chatting with your daughters you will not be able to know what’s eating her inside and what is bothering her in the world.

Babalwa: I think as parents we need really to get involved in our children’s lives and what’s happening that helps us identify things before they hurt them. We need to talk to them about everything, everything, everything. Don’t wait until bad things happen, it will be too late then.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

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