Heartache to heroism – one woman’s incredible journey

IT was a routine day at college when Asunta received the bombshell news that changed her life forever. She was called to the principal’s office, told she had Aids, and given six months to live. She remembers it as if it were yesterday, but 23 years have now passed.

Asunta’s journey since then has become famous throughout Kenya. She has overcome despair and persecution, proved the doctors spectacularly wrong, and fought back against HIV and ignorance.

The support group she founded with four other women now boasts 8,000 members and is at the forefront of the fight against HIV. And today, almost a quarter of a century after she was rejected by her own family, Asunta is a national hero. Her organisation has saved thousands of people and she, perhaps more than anyone else, is living proof that it is possible to live positively with HIV.

Asunta’s story began in 1988, when she was 22 and just starting medical school. All students underwent routine blood tests but Asunta thought nothing of it. Until two weeks later.

“I was summoned to the principal’s office,” she says. “There were student leaders there and, strangely, my mother. It was early in the morning and I did not know how they had contacted her, but she was there.

“I thought she had brought bad news from home and I just held my breath to hear which brother or sister I had lost. But the bad news was about me. The principal just dropped the bombshell and told me ‘Asunta, I’m sorry – you have Aids.’ I felt in that moment my life had been crushed.”

Asunta was expelled and told to pack her bags. She had contracted the virus through her boyfriend, but her mother was told she had “a prostitute’s disease” and had six months to live.

“As I walked out of the room, I walked out of so many things,” Asunta says now. “I walked out of my shelter, my hopes, my childhood dreams.

“I packed my bags, with my huge medicine books. I remember my mother telling me whether I died or not that I had to pay her back what it had cost her to send me to the college. Less than a month ago, everything was fine. I was left wondering: ‘How can the world be so unfair, in just the splash of a moment?’”

When they got home, her mother called a family meeting and ruled that for the six months Asunta would live, she must be given her own cup, plate and spoon. Under no circumstances could they be mixed with other family members’.

Her sister also moved out of their shared room, taking the bedding with her. And then Asunta waited.

“As I waited for death, I remember neighbours coming round to see this girl who had Aids,” she says. “I had left the village and left primary school and secondary school, and villagers expected me to come back with a medicine degree. They came to see this girl who had passed all her exams and come back with Aids.

“Everything around me revolved around dying. I remember looking in the mirror and looking at my reflection, and asking myself, ‘What is this Aids I have? There is so much death in there, and I cannot see it’.

“I destroyed my personal effects. I gave away my clothes and shoes. I was left with one dress that I had spared for my burial. I contemplated suicide and attempted suicide several times, but I lacked the final courage.”

One by one, the six months came and went though and gradually, as they did so, Asunta began to wonder.

“I thought, ‘If I do not die, what do I do with myself? If I do not die, how do I tell the world that my life has taken a different direction? How do I tell them there is no college or graduation, no wedding, no children – and that my life has taken a completely different direction?’ “The only way to face these challenges was to be public about my HIV status and let the world know what was happening in my life. Little by little I let people know. That’s how I met the other four ladies. I persuaded them we could start a family, a support group, and be united by our HIV status.

“There was a lot of stigma and discrimination. Automatically, everybody concluded you were an immoral person, a prostitute, and you deserved to die as quickly as possible. I brought the other women along so we could form a social support network.”

The group was launched in 1993, as the Kenya Network of Women with Aids (Kenwa). And from that moment on, there was no looking back.

In 1998 it became a nationally-registered organisation and within four years, the President of Kenya had visited its centre in Nairobi’s Korogocho slum, HIV was declared a national disaster, and Asunta was being given the Order of the Grand Warrior, one of Kenya’s highest honours.

“We embarked on advocacy and said people with HIV should sit on committees that make decisions that affect them,” she says. “That’s happening at every level now. And we opened branches in other places.”

Kenwa works to influence HIV policies and is instrumental at a street-level, where poor housing, high crime, inadequate sanitation and poverty all accelerate HIV’s spread.

In 2005 alone, Kenwa put 3,500 people on to anti-retroviral drugs, saving thousands of lives, and from its base in Korogocho, it provides valuable medical care, food and advice to people with nowhere else to turn.

“People just look at those with HIV Aids as people who are dying, but they can live productive lives,” Asunta says. “They do not have to be a liability. We have only one life to live here – it must be a complete life.”

Kenwa does work with organisations that support male victims of HIV, but its focus remains on women.

“When HIV infects a woman, it affects the whole family,” Asunta says. “The woman is the carer. When HIV hits a mother, it is at the expense of the other family members.

And as for her own family? Asunta says the rifts of the past have healed, particularly with her mother.

“No matter what has happened, we have a good relationship,”

Asunta says. “She is proud of me and I think sometimes, she forgets that I am HIV infected. There is a lot of information and education now, and people have changed their attitude – including my mother.”

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.

• Kenwa is supported by the Anglican Church of Kenya’s development services arm, which is part-funded by Christian Aid. This year, Christian Aid’s Christmas appeal is focused on HIV, marking the 30th anniversary of the discovery of the virus.

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