The survivor who lived to tell her story of triumph

By Peter Orengo

On a hot Sunday afternoon, Praxides Wasibuye makes her weekly rounds in a village in Kabula, western Kenya, visiting families infected and affected by HIV and Aids.

Her mission is to offer psychosocial advice to ten people living with the virus and, at the same time, train family members on how to manage the virus.

This has been her routine for the last three years, after undergoing a HIV management programme with a local NGO.

The year of her birth, 1988, was a period many of her peers succumbed to infections by their first or second birthdays. Wasibuye is giving hope to others born with the deadly virus.

Like other children in her rural home at Kabula village in Bungoma, Wasibuye suffered from ailments that were easily treated at the local hospital.

This became a routine until tragedy befell her family, just after her 13th birthday.

"In 1999 my father was murdered in a dispute with neighbours over land. They left his body by the side of the road. That is the time my mother became severely ill out of the stress of bringing up a child alone," said Wasibuye.

reasonable harvest

She says her mother never recovered as she was plagued by ill health that she did not survive.

Orphaned, Wasibuye was taken in by her elder sister, who even offered to pay her school fees.

The doctors discovered symptoms of meningitis and she was hospitalised as they carried out further tests. She remained in hospital for one week. When the tests were concluded, she and her family were informed she was HIV positive.

Depression

"I was so depressed, I could not imagine where it had come from because I was so innocent, I used to think anybody who tested positive must have acquired it through promiscuity," said Wasibuye, adding that she nearly dropped out of school out of depression.

"I felt I could not mix with my fellow students. I stayed away from school for one month," she adds.

But more was to come. All manner of ailments, from malaria and typhoid were taking toll on her adopted family. Her sister thought her sero-status was a threat to her family, especially the young children. In the end she was asked to leave.

"When I first got the news, my sister was a bit supportive. But then she started to tell me not to touch her children, or even to share the table with them, or to wash next to them," Wasbuye recalled.

She says when she realised her own status, she begun to understand the root cause of her mother’s death. At that time, everyone saw HIV as a curse, or as witchcraft.

Support

After her discharge from hospital she says she to enrolled at an organisation known as Clients of Comprehensive Care Clinic – an HIV testing and treatment clinic.

Though frightened, she listened to people giving testimonies about their status.

"On my third visit to the clinic I met a girl just about my age who was receiving treatment and we became friends. She had been ‘on care’ for three years and was healthy and strong, so she gave me hope. She made me emotionally stable and able to see that life can go on. We are still friends and in the same support group," she says.

Now a married and mother of a healthy four-year-old boy, Wasibuye is proof that positive living can surmount all barriers.

Even better, she is serving as inspiration to others who are infected and affected.