Hawi Oyugi (left) and Zipporah Achieng during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on November 26, 2024.
Hawi Oyugi, a 25-year-old, is an artiste who takes great joy in portraying daily life events through satirical drawings and paintings.
At his Ngong-based art studio, he has mounted artworks depicting pain and uncomfortable conversations.
“I am very active online where I showcase my work. I have participated in physical exhibitions, and in 2022, I was a third-place recipient of the Creating Truth Award. It highlighted African students ignored and discriminated against while trying to evacuate during the Ukrainian-Russian war,” says Hawi, known in his circles as Pronyathi.
Behind the drawing pencil and paints, that his fingers have mastered, Pronyathi has lived for 25 years battling different health conditions. Some of his pains are covered with the colours on his paperwork.
“I discovered that I had HIV when I was 10 years old after I fell ill and needed surgery and the doctors told me that we have to do a HIV test. So, I got tested, and they discovered I had tuberculosis and HIV,” says Pronyathi.
The revelation came as a shock. He was just a child in school at Aga Khan Primary, who had he was put on tuberculosis (TB) and HIV treatment; a journey he says was difficult because of the size of the drugs.
Before the HIV, Pronyathi had been diagnosed with an oesophageal fistula at a young age.
Hawi Oyugi at Nation Centre in Nairobi on November 26, 2024.
“I was only six days old when the first surgery was done because my oesophagus is smaller than the average size. I have had five surgeries, and for the better part of my life I have been in and out of hospitals because of this,” he tells Lifestyle.
With a constricted oesophagus, swallowing the ARVs was his biggest burden.
“I can’t swallow food normally, and I have to eat food slower than most people. It was not easy swallowing the ARVs and TB medicines, and I would break them in my mouth. They were bitter and would make me feel like vomiting, but I persevered,” he says.
When he turned 13, his mother died. With his dad’s help, Pronyathi continued taking his medication but would sometimes forget.
“As a child, I was taking medication twice a day, unfortunately, with my school activities because I am a very active person, (I played rugby, and participated in school leadership), I’d return home late, and tired, and would sleep without taking my medication,” he says.
He became very sick and went hospital, where he was counselled and encouraged to take his medicines as prescribed, without failure.
As he grew up into adulthood, he realised that he needed to belong to a peer support group, and founded, Y Plus Kenya, a youth organisation that collaborates with young people living with HIV, offering peer support and collaborating on projects that promote HIV prevention among youth.
“In my quest as a peer educator and as an artiste, I was privileged to get a scholarship to attend the International Aids Society Conference in Munich. From that conference, I got the inspiration to come back home and become a health artiste because I saw a great potential for art to be used in a global conversation around health,” says Pronyathi.
But even as he continues with advocacy, he still hopes to pursue a law degree, and do public health as well as project management to support his cause.
“I just love law, I want to support people who don’t have the opportunity to represent themselves in courts to get justice,” he says.
Viral suppression
Since 2016, Pronyathi has been taking a pill a day, and his viral load has been suppressed. With treatment adherence, the viral load goes to the lowest level, and whenever it is undetectable, it means transmitting that virus to another person is zero.
This means that a partner with HIV cannot transmit the virus to their sexual partner, same as a pregnant mother cannot transmit the virus to her child if her viral load is zero.
Does he have plans to marry and start a family?
“I used to wonder how I'd start such a conversation with a partner, but not anymore. That changed when I learned that I had achieved undetectable levels of HIV. I am single at the moment but it doesn’t have anything to do with my HIV status. I look forward to finding a partner whose goals match mine, and who is interested in investing and growing spiritually and mentally and looks beyond my HIV status,” says Pronyathi.
Zipporah Achieng, 23
Zipporah is another young adult living with HIV. She was born with HIV, and for several years, she says she was forced to take medicine but she did not know what she was suffering from.
“I knew my HIV status through people who disgraced us. I think my mum shared my status with a teacher, who told the pupils. The children would discriminate against me. My mum’s family also chased her away from her home. People used to call me 'the dead’ or ‘sick person',” she says.
One day she demanded to know the reason she was taking medicine every day, that was when she was told that they were ARVs.
“The day I knew that I was HIV positive I hated my mum for not having protected me because we had been taught in school that HIV is spread through sex, so I thought that someone defiled me while I was young and infected me with the virus,” she says.
In defiance, she stopped taking her ARVs.
“I was in Class Four. I was struggling to come to terms with the fact that I was born HIV-positive. I stopped taking the drugs,” she says.
Her health deteriorated, and when she was taken to hospital, the counsellors encouraged her to take the ARVs.
Zipporah Achieng during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on November 26, 2024.
But while in Form 3, life threw her another curveball. She got into a romantic relationship that led to her becoming pregnant and forced to drop out of school.
“I learned of my pregnancy when I was already six months pregnant. I was so shocked, fortunately, my daughter is not HIV positive,” she says.
After giving birth, Zipporah went back to school and completed her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examinations.
Now as a young mother, she has something to live for more than just herself. She religiously takes her medicines , and it has paid off.
Since 2019, her virus load has remained suppressed, thanks to drug adherence.
As a single parent, she now uses her social media platforms to inspire others, encouraging them to live positively and embrace change.
She points out that the side effects of not taking her medication taught her lessons that encouraged her adhere to the treatment and become HIV champion.
Zipporah now runs Kibera Rising Against HIV, a support group that also offers free sanitary pads. She also uses her story to give hope to others.
“If my mum could have the information I have now about HIV, I think I would never have been born HIV positive. That is why I am giving back to the community in Kibra, I talk to adolescents about HIV,” she says.
She hopes to study Community and Social Work Development and gain knowledge and in turn impact others by giving them the correct information about how to manage their condition.
“My body has gotten used to the drugs, and that is enough reminder for me to take medication every day at 10pm before I go to bed,” says Zipporah, who is an office administrator at Consolation East Africa.
Zipporah and Pronyathi are among the pioneering young adults who have battled the virus since birth and are now giving society a chance to understand what growing up with the virus really means.
Benson Godia, an adherence counsellor, highlights the challenges adolescents face when managing their HIV medication, especially when they either carry them to school, or come from families where only one child is on treatment. He points out that difficulties arise when disclosure of the HIV status has not been made.
“When a child is born with HIV, disclosure should begin as early as six to nine years old. Full disclosure should ideally be completed by the time one is 10 years old. Delaying disclosure can lead to problems for adolescents, and sometimes they may rebel,” he says.
On a person living with HIV sharing their status with an intimate partner, he advises seeking help from an adherence counsellors through a process called assisted disclosure.
“We encourage people living with HIV to bring their partners to the clinic for testing as if it’s their first time. This helps avoid blame or negative reactions, as we can’t always predict how someone will respond to this information,” Godia says.
He adds that young adults like Zipporah and Pronyathi, have had a positive impact on others facing stigma.
“Their stories help others realise that stigma-related challenges can be overcome with time. You can achieve U=U (Undetectable = Untransmittable) because of adherence to treatment. You can live a normal life, just like anyone who doesn’t have HIV,” he says.
Samuel Gorigo, a HIV clinician, agrees and encourages the normalisation of HIV testing and treatment adherence to help meet the 2030 goal of zero new HIV infections.
“The longer you delay getting tested, the more the virus weakens your immune system, leaving you vulnerable to other infections. By the time you start treatment, your body’s response may be weaker,” says Gorigo.
