July 2012: Asunta Wagura

This month, HIV activist and the olympic touch bearer Asunta Wagura, shares insight on her life, her challenge, how she turned it around and how she is transforming her community; Kenya and the world.

•  Kindly give us a  brief introduction about yourself

I am 47 year old mother of three biological sons (Peter=23yrs Joshua= 5.5 yrs Israel =2yrs and two Frida=28 Ann= 16 adopted daughter. Apart from being a mother, I am one of the founders and currently the Executive Director of KENWA.

• What inspires you?

What inspires me most is my children, because when I look at them am filled with rekindled hope and I wake up every day with renewed energy to work every hard like anyone else so that they can have the best in life. I would hate that sometimes later in life they blame my HIV status as the reason why they didn’t get the best or they didn’t get an opportunity.

Further I am also inspired by women at KENWA who have an amazing energy even when the next obvious action is to give up. They don’t give up until the last breath and they challenge me to never give up but keep the spirit burning until a cure or HIV is invented.

•  Tell us about Kenya Network of Women with AIDS

The Kenya Network of Women with AIDS (KENWA) was founded back in 1993 but then we existed as a small support group of five women. We all had stories of how we came to know we are HIV infected and how our families had shunned us away.  The support group was later to get the name KENWA existed as the only family we could identify with. If for one things were terribly going from bad to worse.  Five years I earlier I had tested HIV positive and all those who could do malicious things to discourage me from living had done their best to leave no doubt that I was not wanted alive.

The college where I had gone for nursing school kicked me out after knowing i was HIV positive. After being kicked out, my family lead by my mother could not take it that I,(and for that matter a first born) had gotten myself HIV infected.  No one and I mean no one listened to my side of the story –it was all reactions and all negative. My family had a meeting and so they consulted with uncles and aunts and it was agreed I am a disgrace and the best I could do is to go and look elsewhere to go and die but not in their  land. When my six months grace was over( the medical school principal had informed I had at least six months to leave before I died one reason why she was sending me home second was I was a risk to the rest of school population).

You can now imagine the frustration when i found out after six months I was not sick and I was not dead .I wanted to call the school principal and ask her if she had missed the calculations in the six month grace period so that I could get a new day for my extension. But as things turned out was not dead and I had to options to let the  AIDs virus doom me or stand firma and take charge of my life and my destination and I chose to give what I never got. Understanding .Compassion and a family and its at that time slow by slowly I started to  look for others that were infected like me and within one year I had gotten five of the women that we started together KENWA. Later the membership rose to 32 members and we registered as a Social group and later as an NGO.

Today we have over 10000 (ten thousand members) men and women and we operate in eight constituencies and hoping one KENWA will be in each and every county. Also as a result of the dying members the KENWA children’s home was born based in Muranga Mujini. Today when i look back it looks as if i have achieved even more than I could have achieved if I made it as a nurse.

• What challenges did you face when you started? How did you manage?

The challenges were to convince people to come together as HIV infected. They could not bear the stigma and the shame that was associated with HIV but I managed to convince a few that when people chose to shun out we had the option of choice. For flight or fight. I convinced them we fight to leave this place  better place for our children. Second was to get empower women with skills to run KENWA as a professional organization because even if we had the good will no one can support or fund on sympathetic basis. We had to look for partnership to help KENWA establish systems and structures that would make it run as professional and credible organization. Pathfinder funded by USAID came in 2001 and it started to build the capacity of KENWA and later other partners also joined in to support the cause and date we have helped millions either with information or a service that made all the difference between helpless and hope and a person made a decision to live a productive constructive quality life. We happy that God through KENWA committed community women workers was able to add quality into the days of his people that found are HIV infected.

When I went public with my HIV status, my main aim was to make a difference.  This called for a basic change in my approach towards life. I have extensively believed that life has purpose, and my HIV – positive status has not changed this conviction. My HIV status created urgency and shaped a new meaning in my life. It was only through a methodical understanding of the HIV virus and my strong believe in God that I genuinely got an idea how this noble move had a stimulus effect in my life and those of other who were in the same boat with me. It dawned on me that I must do most of what I do best despite the odd.  My dad had just passed away and to my single mum it was hard for her to comprehend that her first born and brilliant daughter was on the road to AIDS and at that time unlike today it was a death sentence.

I had to examine my situation with HIV/AIDS from a different angle. When one had AIDS at that peak in time, he or she had to know that there were two distinctive spheres of this disease. One was, and still is, the sphere in which one found him or herself regulated by his or her body immune system. Like every other chronic ailment, good diet and medical care was of paramount importance. The next sphere and which has contributed immensely to death of people with HIV/AIDS was stigma and discrimination. By balancing these two critical issues I have managed to keep my life worth living even with HIV in my body.  If one understands the true character of HIV/AIDS, one will be convinced like me, that he or she cannot live in humiliation, a basement or defeat. One is bound to prevail and overcome.

• What are you most proud of?  

Am most proud of my family, but more than that I am identified with hope for the people including those that are not HIV infected. and through this kind of work I have received many awards and the most recently I was nominated for the Olympic Torch relay ,I am proud that KENWA  under my leadership and the support of the women at the grassroots were able to given that recognition.  Yes it means women have the power and I have worked with women to recognize the power they hold potentially.  That is why I am a proud woman made proud by women. And I am proud that HIV infected persons can now found healthy families.

•  How do you balance, work and family life?

I try to give each its share of my time without stressing either with issues of the other –it’s not easy being a director and a mother. For instance I don’t delegate anything to do with my children baby-well clinic I have to do it myself ,I have to play with my children when it’s time for play and for work  I have to make sure we live to the mandate and expectation of the community who we are accountable to. Of course sometimes things exceed my control and I find myself leaving office at almost midnight pursuing a proposal or a report that has to beat deadline .I know at this juncture I am not doing right to the family because of the telephone calls I received from my boy or my husband demanding to know my whereabouts and why am late. And when I get home the hugs are more tighter may be telling me to be home early the next day.

• What is your message of advice for other women today?

My message to women is ‘do not stop anywhere less than your dreams. Dream on whatever you can and do whatever you can to meet your dreams. People may not be very positive, they may be not very kind but don’t stop dreaming and living your dreams. You are a corked well and you never know what you hold until you let that well out. Aim at the moon and if you miss the moon then you will find yourself in the stars and you will be the star of whatever challenge you undertake.