As I continue bringing you stories of women who have suffered various forms of abuse and discrimination due to their HIV status, today we hear from Sara Kanthiti.
Born on March 7, 1967, Mrs. Kanthiti, is married with two children – aged 16 and 5 – all girls.
She comes from Pitala Village, Traditional Authority Mkanda in Mchinji, central Malawi. She is one of the 950 women who have openly declared their HIV status in the district and are doing voluntary counseling and advocacy to combat further spread of the pandemic.
“I tested positive in April 2004”. This is how this woman starts narrating her story. She looks so healthy that one cannot believe she is living with the virus that causes AIDS.
“The district hospital was conducting a campaign to have more people test for HIV. I just took it for granted to have my blood tested for HIV during that time and it turned out that I was HIV positive”, recalls Mrs. Kanthiti about the year that ushered a new era into her life.
“On the same day I was counseled on how to live my life, but they gave me an appointment to visit the hospital so that they could determine the level of my immune system.”
When she visited the hospital she was told that her immunity level was low and she was advised to start taking anti-retroviral drugs so that her body should be able to fight against opportunistic diseases.
Since then she has accepted her status and has gone further to become a volunteer counselor and AIDS campaigner in the district. “My health is good now; I just hear that people suffer from malaria! Not with me”, she says to prove the strength of HIV anti-retroviral drugs.
Institutional militarism or double standards?
However, when Mrs. Kanthiti left her village to stay at the district headquarters in 2009 little did she know that she would face discrimination for being HIV positive.
“What happened was that a traditional leader for our area (Robert 5) told us tell us to register for the subsidized farm input programme.”
“They said those who were to receive coupons for the cheaper farm inputs were the ‘poor of the poorest’, child-headed families and those who have openly declared that they are HIV positive and are assisting in various community work.
“The chief said, because of the work I do, as a volunteer, I was supposed to benefit from the government subsidized farm inputs.”
She registered as one of those living positively.
“But came the day for confirmation, my name was not mentioned despite that the chief had personally came to my house to tell me to register for the programme. I tried to inquire why my name was not mentioned, but I was not given a convincing answer.
“I also showed up on the day people were receiving coupons but, again, my name was not called. When I asked the chief what was wrong, he told me ‘people living with HIV are troublesome’ and that ‘if my name was not appearing on the list there was no need for me to be present there.”
She says this was the worst discrimination, she had seen since coming in the opening to declare that she is HIV positive and suspects her name was only used by someone who stole her coupon.
“I’m healthy, I’m able to cultivate. Government considered my plight and thought I should receive coupons for subsidized farm inputs, so why should somebody who is also being looked after by the same government deny me this right.”
Mrs. Kanthiti says since that time she has never had opportunity to receive coupons for purchasing subsidized farm inputs, adding that she has no hope that people living with HIV like her will be given priority in the subsidy programme just like other disadvantaged groups.
“This year I haven’t also received any coupon. I know I’ll have problems to produce enough maize this year.
“As somebody who is HIV positive, I am supposed to eat frequently. So, how can we eat frequently when we have no fertilizer”, says Mrs. Kanthiti, “At least they should have given us some seed… soya seed to enable us have a nutritious diet. But all this has not happened.”
She says she fears for her health because she has difficulties in finding food.
Ignorance of where to report abuse
When she suffered her ordeal Mrs. Kanthiti says she did not know where to seek assistance on the matter, therefore she never took it any authority that could have intervened.
“We don’t know the meaning of human rights. If there are organizations or people that can assist us, they should come here to educate us on human rights and freedoms”.
Finding the way out
Despite being denied access to subsidized fertilizer, Mrs. Kanthiti has not backtracked on farming, the major source of her food production.
Working with fellow women under the Coalition of Women Living with HIV and AIDS, (COWLHA) she is able to produce organic manure from pigs which the organization’s Mchinji arm is raising with assistance from Action AID Malawi.
She says this is one way of ensuring independence of women living with HIV.
“As members of COWLHA, we want to be independent and ‘make noise’ on own our own. People should know we exist. This year, each one of us contributed MK 50(0.33 USD) and we’ll be able to buy five bags of fertilizer”, she says.
About women’s rights, she says: “In Malawi, women have limited rights because of our culture which says the man is the head of the family. So, everyone the man becomes an important person than a woman.”
A Call for Action
Mrs. Kanthiti says she has leant a lesson that relying on handouts cannot help solve her problems.
According to her there are many organizations claiming to be assisting people living HIV which are highly publicized, yet there are not helping the actual people affected by the pandemic.
“I advise my fellow women, especially those who are HIV positive not to sorely rely on subsidized fertilizer. We should engage into animal farming because, apart from making money after selling our livestock, livestock provide us with organic manure.”
Talking about anti-retroviral drugs, she says the system in Malawi must ensure that people living with HIV are provided with adequate information on the benefits as well as long term side effects of the drugs.
“We need to know for how long we can take a particular drug and when we should change. We just hear that there are second line drugs, we need to know all these things, because when we’re not told and suffer side effects, we may turn against the hospital staff for hiding the truth from us and say that’s why ‘women on anti-retroviral treatment (ART) are abnormally adding weight’”.
Just like Mrs. Ivy Kazembe, we spoke to earlier, Mrs. Kanthiti feels economic empowerment is crucial in making Malawian women independent.
“Sometimes women cling to men that abuse them because they know they’ll have no means of making ends meet when they divorce”, she observes, “If women are economically empowered through small-scale businesses, they’ll be independent”.
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My Survival Story on ZODIAK Online is sponsored by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa).
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