Agnes Maiti

After a bumpy ride in a packed jeep up the rolling green mountains of Chogoria, Kenya, I arrived at the quaint home of Agnes Maiti. Agnes greeted me with a smile from ear to ear and her three-year-old daughter Ivonne by her side. From the moment I arrived she welcomed me into her home and answered all my questions openly and kindly. Her story was fascinating and heartbreaking.

Agnes is a single mother of two who struggles to support her family while caring for herself and HIV-positive daughter, Ivonne. Agnes’ older daughter, Mercy, is seventeen years old and currently in the Form 3. In 2007 Agnes first discovered she had HIV after she had been very sick for 5 years with malaria, amoebic dysentery, pneumonia and more. At the height of her illness Agnes’ weight dropped from 64 kg to 41 kg. In February 2007 Agnes began her ARVs and today she is doing much better. Since she began her ARVs she has been able to do her normal work and live healthily. In addition, her CD4 count shot up from 100 back to 500.

However, Agnes’ life has not been defined by a few years of illness. She makes a living selling fruits and vegetables at a local market and before that she worked on her brother’s farm. She was married until 2004 when her husband passed away of what she believes was AIDS, although he was never tested for HIV. Agnes has also been participating as a member of Sihag, a Village Hopecore group of 12 HIV-positive people awaiting a loan. She used the merry-go-round money to expand her business by buying more fruits and vegetables to sell at the market and she believes a loan would be life-changing. A loan would allow her to travel to farms to buy her fruits and vegetables more cheaply so that she could make a larger profit at the market. As a result, the increased profits would allow her to buy more food, especially protein, for her family to enjoy. Her family has struggled to get by, especially during the recent drought which caused many crops to fail leaving her family without enough money to buy food or even have enough to eat.