Take a trip down memory lane with Susan Wairimu Metta to the day she confided in a friend that she had tested positive for HIV.
She would later come to regret the error, as the friend incited a campaign of stigma against her, negatively impacting her mental health.
“She told a stylist that I was positive, which is why my hair was falling out. Wairimu recalled that in a matter of hours, she had painted Kitengela using my stories. Susan Wairimu Metta lost weight in 2018 as a result of stress from her job while she was working in Juba.
Aside from her frequent sickness, the business she was employed by finally shut down, leaving her jobless when she got back home.
She revealed to TUKO.co.ke that the development caused her so much stress that, by January 2019, she had fully developed HIV and was a shell of her former self.
Having dropped from 108 kg to 60 kg, she had experienced hair loss, vision issues, and recurrent opportunistic infections, so she made the decision to get tested.
By the time I got to the hospital, I was very sure I either had HIV or was battling cancer. I had HIV positive test results,” Wairimu recounted.
She admitted that knowing what was wrong with her and having witnessed individuals living happily gave her a bittersweet feeling when she heard the news.
She had to maintain her composure and strength in front of her younger siblings as they accompanied her to the optional counseling and testing facility. I had a restless first night.
When reality finally set me, I broke down, worried about how other people would perceive me. Wairimu remarks, “I questioned if life would ever be the same.
She disappeared from her parents’ life and kept the information a secret for a year until she felt strong enough to confront them, as far as her two siblings knew.
Fortunately, they saw through her strength as a woman and embraced her, showing her the most support to yet. “As for friends, I lost some and gained others, but two of my long-term friends became my best supporters until I got back on my feet,” she said.
The worst thing Wairimu did was notify a friend, who then told a salonist that Wairimu was positive and her hair was falling out.
“She painted Kitengela using my stories in a matter of hours. She described it painfully: “I started receiving calls from folks, and some even came over to visit believing it was a fake.
That was the beginning of her stigmatization, as she started to hear rumors everywhere she went, which had an impact on her mental health.
Wairimu recounted an experience when a woman at a gathering she had been to stopped her friend from approaching her due to her social standing.
“I realized owning my story would free me from the stigma of being gossiped about and fearing to go places, that changed everything,” she said.
More than five years later, Wairimu has recovered, is leading a happy life, and has discovered how to shut off the people who doubt her.
She acknowledges that stigma still affects her occasionally, but it’s not as bad as it was at first. She claims that her strategy is to laugh it off after realizing that some people are still adamant about the virus and that ignoring them is usually the best course of action.
“If you are willing to forgive, HIV is a treatable sickness. It’s about creating lemonade out of lemons; I really think that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she continued.
She founded Graced Outreach CBO, a community-based organization, to provide HIV counseling and support after having personal experience with this.
“My main goal is to work towards getting funding for economic empowerment for PLWHIV that are financially struggling so that they don’t default on their meds due to hunger,” she said.
According to Wairimu, people should abandon the dogmatic belief that HIV causes death and realize that life may go on even after testing positive.
She insisted that a person’s life go on regularly regardless of their blood type. “As long as you living and eating right without missing your meds or re-infecting yourself, you live a healthy life that no one would even know,” she said.
