Elite Nails and Beauty

Because in our country, and on our continent, HIV has pervaded the most intimate moments in peoples’ relationships, it has burrowed itself deep into the very soul of our most unmentionable of taboos- sex.

It has held us hostage through our own silence and our burning shame. and most strangely, in a country and a continent divided by many things, it has united us, in the deaths of our parents, our brothers and sisters, our friends. even our enemies. But amid the pain that HIV/Aids has caused, are threads of hope- that one day there will be a generation that does not know how to describe HIV, because they donot have to experience it.

This is a story of that hope and the audacity of those, infected and affected, who have remained unbowed by the enormity of the task of finding a cure for HIV/Aids.

In the middle of the ever growing grey rows of apartment blocks in Mwiki, east of the city centre of Nairobi, Evelyn Nyambura Simaloi, and her seven-year-old son Emmanuel are preparing to go on a journey, one that they hope will change both their lives. Simaloi, especially, has hoped that this day will come for almost all of her adult life.

“It was about two years after I had finished high school, my step-mum had kicked me out for stealing a plate of chips. so I met a manwho became my boyfriend and took me in. one day, I was looking for a job and they required that I take a HIV test. Around the same time, my boyfriend fell very sick and was admitted at Kenyatta National Hospital Ward 7D. I will never forget that ward. then he later told me that he knew he was HIV-positive. I was really shocked,” she recalls.

The news of her status was a blow she just wasn’t prepared to take. To this day, she still has a photo of the man who infected her with the virus. At just 21 years of age, Simaloi felt the cruel irony of contracting a disease she thought would kill her just as she was about to begin life as an adult. This, to her, was yet another dark twist in the tough life she had already endured.

A tough past

When Simaloi was an infant, her father, then, an airforce pilot, and her mother, separated. Esther Wanjiku, Simaloi’s paternal aunt says: “Simaloi and I had a special bond. I felt very sad, especially for her, although I did not fully understand why they were separating.”

Simaloi found herself in the homes of step-parents whom, she says, saw her as a burden- as a baggage from past relationships. After they discovered her status, her family was the last place she was going to look for support.

Desperate, bitter, and in denial, Simaloi told herself that she would not die alone.

“I used to have multiple sexual partners,” she told the radio station QFM.

It became more than promiscuity for Simaloi. She turned to commercial sex work to support herself, and try to soothe the bitterness that she felt for having contracted HIV. for three years, Simaloi partied, drank, and had sex with many men.

“I used to look for womanisers- men who like women. I was young and attractive. when men would see me on the dance floor, they would come running. I would always propose a condom, but some would refuse and I would say ‘fine, have it.’” But all that changed one night in 2002.

Turning point

“I was coming from a chang’aa den at like 3am. A man who had wanted me followed me, and raped me. I conceived,” she says. Simaloi decided to turn her life around after discovering that her rape ordeal had left her pregnant. She became a Christian, stopped drinking, and reconnected with some members of her family.

Nine months later, Emmanuel was born; spinning her rape ordeal into what she says is the biggest blessing she has ever received. But even Emmanuel, or Manu as she likes to call him, wouldn’t escape her past.

“My son is a blessing. He has the virus, and that is one thing I regret. I gave him the disease through breast-feeding. He gets really sick two or three times a year and I panic, but whenever we celebrate his birthday, I thank God because I never thought we would go this far,” says Simaloi.

Manu had a positive impact on her as she eventually came to terms with her status. more than that, in her work as a freelance journalist and a peer educator, she found her purpose. She would tell people that HIV is a virus like any other and encourage HIV-positive people to get on anti-retroviral treatment as soon as possible. But in telling people this, Simaloi was secretly fighting her own battle with the disease- that of getting onto ARVS herself.

“For me personally, I don’t want to get onto ARVS. yes they prolong life but I don’t want them,” she says. however, Simaloi did not know that HIV was eating away at her.

“The period between the time one gets infected and the time the disease manifests itself can be between 8 and 15 to 20 years. There are three stages of HIV; in the first phase, after two months of infection you develop flu, or you have flu like symptoms.

The next phase is asymptomatic HIV where you don’t have any symptoms. then there is stage three where opportunistic diseases begin to develop and stage four when you develop full blown Aids,” says Dr Nicholas Muraguri of Nascop.

A month before we first met her, Simaloi was admitted in hospital for one month with a severe case of cryptococal meningitis. her son Emmanuel took pictures of her while she was ill. She was advised to start anti-retroviral treatment immediately, before she slipped into stage four of HIV — full blown Aids. But Simaloi resisted.

“I eat well, I’m okay even after getting ill,” she says. Simaloi admits that she did not want to get onto anti-retroviral treatment, because, apart from the side effects she had seen, it is a life-long treatment, and not an absolute guarantee of recovery from illness, especially for people like her who have already progressed into stage three of HIV.

ARVS are recommended once HIV-positive people’s CD4 count, that is, the number of white blood cells in the body, goes below 500. when Simaloi was discharged from hospital after recovering from meningitis, her CD4 count was just 107.

Her attempts to boost the count with vitamin pills were working in fits and starts, but she nursed the hope of finding one set of medication that would leave her healthy for life, without committing to taking it every day.

Encounter with a herbalist

Then one day, she heard about medication that promised that. and more. the medicine was made by a man in Molo, in the southern Rift Valley region of Kenya. and it was not just medication for HIV/Aids management, its maker said that it had the potential to cure her of HIV.

So on November 11, 2010, Simaloi, still weak and shaken from her last battle against HIV, set out with her son. Ironically unshaken by the looming consequences of her decision- she walked with the support of a crutch, the lingering effect of the meningitis, which at times causes partial paralysis- but she was also leaning on her faith. Faith in a man she had never met, medicine she knew little about, and faith in time, which she knew she may have little of.

For most of the drive to Molo, Simaloi sat in silence, reading a brochure that told her about the herbal medicine she was on her way to take. it was a big decision and having lived with HIV for 11 years, she knew that there were many herbalists who had claimed to have the answer to HIV- many of which she has tried before. This time around though, she was confident.

“I do not know why, but this one is different,” she says. In pursuit of her story, we all arrive in Molo town, a small outpost of the large breadbasket that is the Rift Valley. A beautiful landscape from which, like in many other places in Kenya, the cries of people who have lost loved ones to HIV, have echoed.

But there too have been whispers of a man trying to turn this tide of tears back. A son of the soil with a remedy that people say has worked wonders for the health of many who were staring death in the face.

60-year-old-David Mwangi is that man. and as he comes out to meet Simaloi and Manu, he looks like a man who, if all the rumours about him were to go by, cloaked this mystique well under his unassuming appearance.

But once inside, his faith, and his convictions are very clear. After Simaloi tells Mwangi how she and Manu contracted HIV, he begins what he calls a counselling session, heavy laden with biblical references.

“I believe anybody has the capacity for everything. Nebuchadnezzar was used to destroy the Middle East. To believe you must cleanse yourself of all of these other beliefs,” he says. “You have to believe that this works.”

Depending on faith

A lot of what Mwangi tells Simaloi on this day is about her own belief that his medicine can work. Because he does not profess to have any specialised knowledge as a doctor or as a traditional healer, we ask Mwangi on a different occasion how he came about this medicine. the one area he says he does have experience in, belief, and faith, gives us the answer.

“There is something inside called a guiding spirit,” he says. Mwangi then goes on to explain to Simaloi what his medicine is. “What we are going to do is that we are going to kill the virus. one thing is that you will start to feel changes in 10 days. In 15 days’ time people will start to notice. my medicine will do its work. you will have to attend to other things like eating right.”

But having heard advice like this before, an attentive Simaloi has some questions.

“Are you saying that this will kill the virus completely?” she asks whereupon Mwangi explains: “When you see people who have lived for six years without using ARVS coming back to help, what do you say? we are coming from old wineskins to new wineskins,” he explains.

After what has been 30 minutes of a back and forth between Mwangi and Simaloi, he goes to get his medicine. His medicine, which he calls poochmed, is extracted mostly from plants and natural products but he will not tell us what it’s made of.

Simaloi though seems happy with the discussion.

“I’m still very positive. Usually I walk into a place, but today I have got no nagging feeling about this,” she says. Minutes later, poochmed, Mwangi’s medicine is brought out. Simaloi and Manu have their first taste. David insists on their taking more water than usual to help the medicine in its effectiveness.

This first dose will last Simaloi and Manu two weeks, after which they will need to come back and get a second dose. Mwangi also wants them to return so that he can monitor their progress, and chat with Simaloi, who he feels still has misgivings about the medicine; especially whether it will or will not cure her of HIV.

A week later Simaloi and Manu are on their way to their regular clinic near their home and Simaloi says she is feeling a big change since she began taking poochmed.

Manu, however, reacted to the medication badly and had diarhorrea for three days. “Now I have to take half dose”.

Did it work?

At the clinic, Simaloi decided to take a HIV test. even though she knew her status, she thought it was a good opportunity to get the message out there that knowing your status is half the battle won. She was also feeling very optimistic about poochmed. “I am positive, definitely positive,” she says.

In most hospitals that run HIV clinics, once a person tests positive for HIV, the next step is to get their CD4 count taken. Because she is been feeling better, Simaloi decides to check her count. “It’s not good,” she says.

The doctors here shepherd her to the drugs counter to ensure that she takes her dose of ARVS. But as we go back to her home, Simaloi begins to regain her confidence in poochmed. “I have seen drastic changes,” she says. the effects of her bout of meningitis seem to have worn off, but this is where most doctors claim that herbal medicine can be at best confusing, and at worst, disastrous for someone’s health.

Prof Omu Anzala is the director of the Kenya Aids Vaccine Initiative. He has been at the forefront of the search for a Kenyan developed aids vaccine. “With proper science we diagnose and give treatment for HIV as well as for opportunistic diseases. with herbs you don’t know what is being treated,” says the professor.

“I don’t think that there is any herbal concoction that has proved efficacious against the disease,” says Dr Muraguri. even Mwangi himself knows that his chances at being taken seriously as a researcher that may have stumbled onto what could be the biggest medical triumph of this generation are slim.

“The biggest drawback with Africans is that if something does not come from the West we consider it primitive, backward. it has to come from over there so we can take it,” he protests.

A persistent patient

In our company, Simaloi and Manu are back in Molo to see David for their second dose of poochmed. Mother and son claim that their health has vastly improved. the molluscum- the black pimples on her face, seem to have faded since the last time we saw her, and so outwardly at least, something seems to be happening.

But Simaloi still has questions about the efficacy of Mwangi’s drug. “I have always feared to ask this: will I turn negative, what am I expecting?” she asks. There seems to be confusion about whether Mwangi’s medicine cures or manages HIV, so I jump in to ask what exactly Mwangi believes the medicine does. He obliges.

“There has been no medicine that can isolate the virus within the CD4 and kill it,” he says. when we ask him if that is what the medicine does he replies in the affirmative.

“After the medicine does its work, you will test negative, but if you go for another test you will test positive. for instance there is a lawyer; a lady who says she tests negative but when she goes for, I don’t know what, virology, she tests positive,” says Mwangi.

He also claims to have given his medicine to nearly one hundred people like the lawyer he has just described. we ask to contact them, but he is hesitant. He claims that none of his former patients ever wants to be associated with the disease — or with him after they have been healed. it takes us months to convince him to let us interview one of his “patients”. On our third visit to Molo, he introduces us to a friend and a neighbour whom he says took poochmed. He is the 30-year-old John Hamisi Hanga.

John Hamisi looks frail, the effects of what he says was his brush with death, after contracting tuberculosis late in 2010. Tuberculosis is one of the more common and deadly opportunistic diseases that affect HIV positive people who have progressed to stage three of the virus. Hanga though, claims that he is doing much better than he was in January 2011, when he was given anti-retrovirals after his diagnosis.

“The drugs reacted badly on me so I took them back to the doctor who said I had no alternative but to use them. But then I happened to meet this man David.”