After receiving training in positive living from CARE Besinati started her own HIV support group for members of her community. © Tim Freccia / CARE
Children born in Malawi face a daily struggle simply to survive.
With 65 per cent of the population living in poverty, sadly, one in six children won’t have the opportunity to celebrate their fifth birthday.
The small, landlocked country is battling with one of the highest national HIV prevalence rates in the world and drowning in the pandemic. Yet unlike natural pandemics that change with the season or are time-bound, the HIV pandemic strangling parts of Africa has devastating and debilitating long term implications.
At 35 years of age, Besinati is just one woman of the 14 per cent of the adult population living with HIV in Malawi. While cultural beliefs and attitudes toward HIV have been major obstacles for women living with the virus in the past, Besinati is fighting to see change in her lifetime. With education as her weapon and the children of future generations as her motivation, she is courageously changing the face of HIV in her community with the help of CARE.
Joining CARE’s Village Umbrella Committee, a group set up to help address the needs of the community, Besinati brought a voice and a face to those that have died in vain from HIV in her village. ‘Before I was in the group, people living with HIV were discriminated against. I became a member of the Village Umbrella Committee to represent the voice of other people with HIV,’ she says.
‘I took the discrimination as a part of life because most people at that point weren’t aware of what HIV was; there was a lot of stigma.’ In an act of selfless bravery, Besinati was one of the first women in her village to declare her status to her friends, family and the committee; ‘I decided to put myself out in the open and tell my community my status so that the discrimination would cease.’
Since then, her fight to bring HIV into the public eye and help people understand the virus has gone from strength to strength. ‘A lot of people are dying from HIV related infections and diseases because they are not taken care of, so I decided to start a support group to assist those people who are affected. I wasn’t afraid to start the group because I wanted to help those affected as I was.’
After receiving training in positive living from CARE, Besinati started her own HIV support group for members of her community. With 37 members, the group meets every Saturday afternoon and according to Besinati; ‘we teach each other how to take away our worries and how to best manage our homes with good food and sanitation like having clean water in our homes to reduce infections.’
Already, she’s seeing the changes she had hoped for; more people are going for voluntary HIV counselling and testing for HIV, people are accessing medication and ‘those that were bedridden can now walk. When I see these changes, it’s all worthwhile. I feel powerful because I’m seeing the changes from my work,’ says Besinati.
Behind her soft eyes and beaming smile, one would never know the sacrifices she has made for the sake of her communities’ children. As she gently cradles a small child from her village in her arms, her message is clear; for him she hopes for change, and for herself, she hopes to witness it.
