Women Change Hearts, Attitudes about Living with HIV & AIDS
Women in Teso and Nyakach Kenya faced discrimination, insults an even violence because of the stigma associated with the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Women were ostracized, denied property rights and stripped of their right to a livelihood because of this stigma. But the voice of one woman started a movement to change all of this.
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Kachamtu = Accepted
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Roseline Esikedi spoke up for herself and, in doing so, freed many more widows from the condemnation, giving them instead a life of hope.
Esikedi publicly revealed her HIV-positive status after going through an ActionAid training program called Ambassadors of Hope. By training Ambassadors, ActionAid hoped to attack the stigma around the disease. By helping Esikedi embrace her own voice and to demand her own rights, the program’s impact was multiplied exponentially.
ActionAid AIDS Activists at a rally in Mombasa, Kenya
Copyright © ActionAid/David San Milan
“Ambassadors of Hope is a series of training where basic information about HIV, testing types and procedures and transmission is shared,” says Ken Odumbe, ActionAid Kenya’s HIV and AIDS coordinator. “Participants share among themselves their experiences when they found out their status” he says.
“They then go through a session of forgetting the past and building the future and making AIDS stop with them,” adds Esikedi.
After the training, Esikedi declared her status to other women members at her local church.
“Many other widows went for tests as a result,” Esikedi says.
Five infected women formed an association to lend each other support and a women’s support group - Kachamtu a Teso word meaning accepted was born.
There are now 19 widows and a widower in Kachamtu support group.
“In Kachamtu we have accepted our situation and we are positive about our lives,” Esikedi who has since started her own tailoring business, says proudly.
“We have buried many of our relatives blindly and we must put a stop to this. People must learn to accept their status and live life,” she says.
Ulusi Youth Group, supported by ActionAid in Usigu, near Kisumu, performs dances and drama to communicate social and health issues particularly around HIV/AIDS
Copyright © Sven Torfinn/ Panos Pictures/ ActionAid
About 100 people have now tested and accepted their status because of this group. Seven other support groups for people with AIDS have been formed.
Members also keep bee hives and sell honey to the local market through AKUKURANUT – another local organization ActionAid supports to reach people with AIDS in Teso.
The group also runs a garden where they grow nutritious crops to supplement balanced diet and keep strong.
“For those of us who are HIV positive food is our cure, drugs are just suppressants,” she says.
The women’s selfless acts of love are slowly changing the attitudes of community’s attitude about people with AIDS.
“Now I feel like I do not have HIV virus in the body any more,” says Disiranda Amachulang, a beneficiary member who also lives with HIV.