Feel free to skip to part 4. This section is more or less a filler but if you want the nitty gritty read on.
Monday morning found me seated in the HIV/AIDS section of a certain hospital waiting to be attended to. The guy who was supposed to attend to me was still in a session with a group of, I presume, HIV positive individuals nearby. I didn’t have anything else to do so I just sat and listened as he advised them on various issues ranging from diet, collection of ARVs, spouses and the like. Some of the individuals seemed to pay attention, others seemed in deep thought and others just didn’t seem to care. It was hard to ignore a particular man who kept interrupting the speaker with various examples that he’d seen or heard. I guess he’s one of those people who’d fit perfectly in a conference discussing ‘Living Positively’. All the while I couldn’t help but wonder if to be a part of this group was the future that awaited me.
Soon enough they were done and the speaker came to me and we started discussing the circumstances that led me to that place. We discussed many issues but what stood out the most was the guy’s shock that I was having sex with someone who wasn’t a committed partner. What’s the norm in our world seemed almost unbelievable to this guy as he seemed to wonder just how I could be so reckless. As we continued chatting (he was a nice/friendly guy) he explained that before I could even think of starting on the medication I had to first take the test. THE TEST! It’s important at this point that I mention that up to that point I’d never once taken a HIV test. This was partly because I’d never had unprotected sex (dry fry ni wewe) so I didn’t feel it was necessary but deep inside I knew that I was also scared shitless of taking that test. The idea of getting HIV from any source other than unprotected sex is very painful and unfair from my perspective and I couldn’t imagine being in that situation. But now I had to take the test.
To cut a long story short I went through the usual emotions but turned out to be negative. Later that day I brought the chic and she was also negative so obviously case closed, right? Wrong! K-Talk’s in-house doctor advised that “PEP lazima” because of that 3 month window and now I go to the real issue I’ve wanted to discuss and that’s the hustle of getting PEP in Kenya
