Impact in numbers:
In the heart of Homa Bay County, where red dust dances on footpaths and silence still clings to the subject of HIV, one woman is rewriting the narrative, not just for herself, but for a generation.
Biesta Adhiambo Obudho. A widow. A mother of three daughters. A woman who has lived with HIV for over two decades. But most importantly, a woman who refused to be defined by a diagnosis.
From diagnosis to determination
The year was 2005. Biesta was pregnant with her last child when routine antenatal testing shattered her world. She tested positive for HIV.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she says, her eyes soft with memory. “I had only gone for my clinic visit. When they told me, I walked away. For a whole year, I stayed in denial.”
But HIV waits for no one. Within months, her body weakened. Tuberculosis set in, opportunistic infections followed, and the baby she had carried with hope tested positive too.
“He didn’t make it,” Biesta says, her voice quiet but composed. “I buried my child before I buried my shame.”
The birth of Stepping Stone
Grief broke her. But it also gave her the courage to live, not just for herself, but for other women walking the same lonely road. That same year, Biesta, alongside two other HIV-positive women, founded Stepping Stone, a grassroots group designed to empower women living with HIV through counseling, peer support, and livelihood opportunities.
“Today, I’m the only one of the three still alive,” she reflects. “But their spirits walk with me. We started with nothing but pain and hope. Now we’ve built something strong.”
What began as a modest support group has grown into a community-based organization that employs over 20 people including some of the very children it once supported under its OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) program. Stepping Stone now collaborates with local and international organizations like AphiaPlus, Aphia II, Mildmay, and KEMNET.
“We turned tragedy into transformation,” Biesta says. “That’s what Stepping Stone represents. Proof that life after diagnosis is not only possible, it can be powerful.”
A looming crisis
But just as Stepping Stone thrives, Biesta is sounding the alarm on a new threat—one more silent than stigma, but just as deadly: the looming shortage of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs.
For Biesta, ARVs are more than pills, they are lifelines. “It’s the medicine that got me here. It’s the reason I’m strong, raising my daughters, running this organization.”
Rumors of dwindling supplies and withdrawal of donor funding particularly from key programs supported by the U.S. government have ignited fresh fears in communities already battling poverty and disease.
“If the drugs disappear, we disappear,” she warns. “The government must step in. We cannot be abandoned now.”
Breaking barriers in a discordant world
Biesta’s personal life has also defied conventional expectations. Her late husband tested HIV-negative, a fact that sparked confusion and even suspicion within the community.
“They called us names. Said I was lying. Even our extended family couldn’t understand. But we were what doctors call a ‘discordant couple.’ We practiced safe sex. He never got infected.”
Her experience has helped normalize conversations around discordant relationships—a rarely discussed reality in many Kenyan villages.
“We need more education,” she says. “More honesty. HIV is not a death sentence. And love doesn’t disappear with diagnosis.”
The power of grassroots health
For Biesta, community health workers (CHWs) are the unsung heroes of rural Kenya’s HIV fight. She believes empowering them is part of the long-term solution to reach people beyond hospital walls.
“These workers walk through the mud, door to door, checking on us. They can help deliver medication, especially now when hospitals are understaffed and strained.”
She sees Stepping Stone as a bridge between the medical world and the home. And as the conversation around donor dependency grows louder, she hopes the Kenyan government will take ownership of community-based solutions like hers.
The legacy of a fighter
Biesta is not just her survival. Her story is a transformation of pain into purpose, of stigma into structure, of isolation into community.
She has not only built a sanctuary for HIV-positive women, she has built a blueprint for resilience, a case study in courage.
“Let the government walk in our shoes,” she says with firm grace. “We’re not asking for much. We’re only asking for life.”
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