ALICE'S STORY: "At times I would ask God, ‘Why can’t I die rather than see what is happening to my children while I am alive?’”

Alice was in the kitchen when the fire started. Her eldest son, Duncan, was reading a book, so deeply engrossed that he didn’t notice the flames. It was another son, playing outside, who raised the alarm.

The family got out but the house was destroyed and Alice, already a widow and a single mother of six, was left homeless.

It would be six years before they again had a house they could call their own. For six long years, Alice slept in a makeshift shelter and the children relied on neighbours’ goodwill.

“The situation was so pathetic that at times the children would cry and ask “why us?”, says Alice. “Those were the worst moments for me as a mother because I was vulnerable and there was nothing I could do.

“At times I would ask God: ‘Why can’t I die rather than see what is happening to my children while I am alive?’”

Alice, now 43, was a victim in many ways. She was a victim of HIV, which had killed her husband Alex and also infected her. She was a victim of the arson attack that left her and her children homeless. And she was the victim of a cultural practice that is meant to bring stability, but which in her case just brought further tragedy.

Wife inheritance is enshrined in much of rural Kenya. When a husband dies, village elders gather to identify a suitable man to care for the widow and any children. The motive is sound but when HIV is involved, the results can be disastrous.

Alice knew she had HIV and she knew what would happen if she were to sleep with another man. She asked to be left to raise the children alone, but the elders refused. Alice was ‘inherited’ by a distant relative of her husband, and when that man also died, within a year, his first wife blamed Alice.

“We had a fight and she burnt the whole house,” says Alice, speaking through a translator.

“It was a very, very fearful moment. I was in the kitchen cooking at night, when the lady came and lit the fire. My first-born was in the house reading a book and was concentrating so much he did not realise the house was on fire. Another son outside screamed that someone had lit a fire on the house.”

The children found refuge with neighbours but Alice lived for the next six years in a rudimentary shelter she had constructed earlier.

“It should not even be called a house,” she says, looking back. “I was being rained on and the entire wall was just spaces and gaps.

“People rejected me and did not want to come near me – more so, because they knew I was positive.”

Alice had told only her children that she had HIV, but gradually she began to talk to fellow HIV sufferers. They formed a loose social network but the turning point came in 2008, when a health worker from the Anglican Church of Kenya showed them their potential.

They founded a group called Imami (Swahili for ‘faith’), which has since grown to include 35 people, within a larger network of similar groups.

They pooled resources and in 2009, as part of a larger regional project, they scraped together enough to construct a house for one member – built for Alice, on the site of her old one.

It was, she says, a “great, great relief” and it was a springboard for her economically. She borrowed money through a “saving and loaning” association and now runs a timber business from her home, selling wood to furniture and coffin-makers and using the proceeds to educate her children.

“I have six children and all of them are now in school,” she says proudly. “There is Duncan (19), Elizabeth (17), Samuel (13), Mohammed (12), Helen (ten), and Lydia (eight).”

“There are many challenges in life but I am hopeful that I will be able to take care of them,” she says. “I have a very big thank you in my heart for the Anglican Church of Kenya. It is because of them I now have self-esteem and can be called a person.”

Gavin Aitchison travelled to Kenya with Christian Aid, to witness the charity's work with HIV victims and to meet those on the front-line in the fight against the virus.

• Christian Aid’s Christmas appeal this year is focused on HIV, marking the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the virus.

If you would like to donate to Christian Aid’s Christmas Appeal, or would like to find out more about its work on health and HIV, visit christianaid.org.uk/christmas or call 0845 7000 300.