Asunta Wagura has risen above stigma and a terrifying six-month prognosis to become an HIV and Aids crusader and caregiver extraordinaire. She is the CEO of Kenya Network of Women with Aids (KENWA), an organisation she established in response to the HIV and Aids situation. She has been honoured with, among others, an Order of the Grand Warrior of Kenya (OGW) and a Head of State Commendation (HSC), for her resilience and sacrifice in this crusade.
When an applicant with no non-governmental organisation (NGO) experience outbid the Government on a ‘Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria’ proposal in 2002, she became an instant sensation who could not just be wished away.
Asunta Wagura had just established the Kenya Network of Women with Aids (KENWA) when an acquaintance encouraged her to apply for programme funding from Geneva after the Government refused to include KENWA’s proposal into the country’s proposal. To her amazement, not only did she win the bid, but an equally-surprised government was asked to work with Wagura and her network and learn to include all players in their HIV and Aids response.
The funding helped KENWA bypass the red tape and put at least 3000 people on antiretroviral (ARV) treatment between 2003 and 2005 when drugs targeting HIV were scarce. To date, over 10,000 adults and 1,500 children are on treatment. KENWA reaches about 70,000 households of four million people weekly with information both locally and internationally. Winning the bid meant that people living with HIV and Aids had now been accepted as key players in the war against the pandemic, with Wagura as their undisputable voice.
“The Global Fund was aware of our challenges. KENWA was fairly new. They sent a technical team to help me set up the office and put other professional systems in place,” Wagura recalls. “I did not even have an email address at that time.”
More than 20 years later, the organisation continues to touch lives. They started with the barest minimum — cooking and bedside feeding of porridge to bedridden patients. “As we fed them, we encouraged them to have sense of purpose in life. We told them that HIV was not a death sentence,” Wagura says, adding: “Who knows, a cure could be found, but will only find those who cling to hope and refuse to give up.”
In her sixth year of living with HIV and Aids, Wagura knew what her patients were going through, having suffered stigma and rejection from friends and family alike. When she outlived the six months prognosis, she felt encouraged, gaining a new lease of life. Unbowed, she was more than determined to do something bigger for herself and for other women in her situation.
Wagura started off as a volunteer worker, who lived on an allowance she received from the Kenya Aids Society (KAS). Her docket then was to provide home-based care to HIV and Aids patients, with whom she shared her experience. Many of the clients only needed the right resources and proper interventions to live.
“That’s why when I got the Global Fund grants, my priority was to put as many patients as possible on ART (antiretroviral therapy) and feed those badly in need of nourishment,” she explains. Korogocho women, for example, “had put their best foot forward to support me, leaving me no room to give up. We had to win.”
The crusader for people living with HIV and Aids is proud that some of the children survived and even thrived despite having lost parents to the scourge. “It’s my best reward.” Although they lost many others, they stayed the course.
Irregularity in certain activities at KAS frustrated Wagura and forced her out of the organisation. She worked briefly with Plan International before deciding that she could do much more for people living with HIV if she had her own organisation. That is how she conceived and created KENWA in 1993.
During her sustained home-based care, Wagura saw many patients who had lost all hope regain the will to live. Some of her clients were in dire financial straits, and since she could not pay their rent, she pleaded with landlords to extend payment deadlines. She assured them that as soon as her members got better, the rent arrears would be cleared. She got local chiefs to intervene and the project succeeded, “not because I was professional, but because many eyes were now open to the fact that HIV and Aids was a manageable condition.”
The road was not always smooth for Wagura. She discovered that she was HIV-positive in 1988 while studying nursing at a Nairobi college. Her nightmare started when the school conducted random HIV tests on students.
One day while in class, the messenger of doom came knocking. “As the teacher opened the classroom door, I felt deep down that it had something to do with me. I was right,” Wagura recalls. She was asked to pick her books and follow the matron. At the principal’s office, she found her mother seated. The words that came from the principal’s mouth were, “Wagura, I’m sorry, you have Aids, and your mother has come to take you home… You may live for six months. Do you have any questions?”
Naturally, she had a trillion questions. “I could neither ask them, nor could I cry. My eyes were dry,” she says. Everything died right before her eyes. As far as she was concerned Asunta wa Aids (Asunta with Aids) had now been born. “Yet, I needed to tell the world my side of the story…that I didn’t choose to be this way and I was still human.”
The shame she suffered was too much to endure alone. That is why KENWA has a programme on stigma. The outfit seeks to empower people living with HIV and Aids to live meaningfully and take charge of their destinies. “We engage with groups doing community outreach work to encourage each other that we’re not alone in this; that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
That ray of hope was not what Wagura saw as she was escorted to clear out of the hostel after the devastating revelation. Instead, she found askaris (security guards) in masks, gloves and caps waiting. The school linen she handed back was immediately placed into polythene bags and burnt to avoid infecting anyone.
Wagura, who was still trying to come to terms with this new status, heard her mother say in Kikuyu: “Wambui, whether you live or die, you must ensure you repay me the cost of bringing you to this college.” She could not believe how things could have changed so drastically.
Words of Wisdom
• “Don’t go any less than your dreams.”
• “By all means, avoid HIV and Aids.”
• “Helping those affected and infected get back on their feet taught me that it’s small things that matter.”
Looking back, the human rights activist is grateful for remaining optimistic even in her darkest hour.
KENWA, which runs programmes in Nairobi and central Kenya, faces challenges such as resource mobilisation, especially with shifts in donor funding, as HIV and Aids issues are no longer considered a priority. However, the organisation is finding ways to adapt and work with whatever is available.
Wagura, through KENWA, works hard to prove that people living with HIV and Aids are just as capable as other people. She ensures that they are empowered by investing heavily in professional training. She is often frustrated when her staff is poached by international organisations. Nevertheless, Wagura is happy to throw a lifeline to those who once thought it was all over for them. Despite her expulsion from college, nursing still found its way in Wagura’s life as a home-based care nurse. She doesn’t visit homes as often as she used to. Her role as KENWA’s CEO keeps her busy with its daily administrative work. She enrolled at the University of South Africa as a distance learner, taking a course in Development Studies.
Wagura has deep affection for KENWA and its members. She considers them her other family. “The women are sisters I can rely on. We are there for each other,” she says. She shares how happy she is when she walks into a bank, for example, and is served with great dignity and respect and then someone escorts me to the door and whispers, “I was one of your OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children).”
Although it was no walk in the park, Wagura, facilitated their education or vocational training and it gives her such joy to see them flourishing. She hopes KENWA will become a sustainable women empowerment institution. Her greatest accomplishment, she says, is being a mother. She leaves work by 3pm to go home and spend time with her children.
She is driven by the desire to make a difference in someone’s life. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing, but just giving someone porridge and helping them get back on their feet taught me that it’s really the small things that matter.”
Twenty-seven years down the line, she is fortunate to have conquered the virus that could have stolen her health if not her life. Save for an estranged husband, she is fulfilled and has no regrets about the path her life took. “Who knows, it may have been like the whale that swallowed Jonah only to spit him out in Nineveh where his mission was,” she explains.
“If I didn’t get HIV, I doubt my life would have had such an impact,” she says.
Wagura is also proud to have been nominated among 8000 inspirational 2012 Olympic torch bearers for the once-in-a-lifetime relay.
She bared her life in a column ‘Asunta’s Diary’ which used to run every Wednesday in the Living pull-out of the Daily Nation. Ironically, Wagura’s family, including her mother, are yet to accept that she is public about her HIV status. “They want nothing to do with me or my children. They are divided between those on my side and those against. My grandma prayed for me and believes I’m healed.”
Her dream is to give her boys a few more quality years. Wagura has since expanded KENWA into South Sudan by opening a sister organisation named the South Sudan Network of Women.