Positive living in rural Tanzania
Faith is 61 years old and is one amongst 760 000 women living with HIV in Tanzania. She lives in a rural village in the Kilimanjaro region in the northern part of the country. She is a member of a women’s dairy cooperative that also provides financial services and support through a village community bank, including savings and credit. The cooperative organizes entrepreneurship skills building and includes activities on awareness around HIV prevention and impact mitigation, with support from an ILO programme on HIV and AIDS prevention and impact mitigation, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). This programme has as one of its components a specific focus on the informal economy and cooperatives to mitigate impact of HIV and AIDS and improve working conditions in informal settings.
Faith is a widow and mother of five adult children. She tested HIV positive in 2005 and explains that it was hard to accept at first, but that she felt she had no option but to take good care of herself and lead a positive life. She says that it was only when she tested positive that she understood why her husband had died after prolonged illness: “None of my relatives or my in-laws talked to me about his diagnosis. It was silent. I once saw my in-laws had sad faces and long discussions about my husband’s sickness but they did not involve me in this.”
Faith keeps three healthy dairy cows with good yield and she generates income from the milk sales through the women’s dairy cooperative. However, when she announced her HIV status she also lost her clients. “It was a difficult time”, she says, as she relied on the milk sells as her sole income. “I leant that you need enough money or a business to generate enough income to be able travel to town for regular check-ups, to collect antiretrovirals and to get timely treatment of opportunistic infections. We do not have these services at our village dispensary.” She faced stigma and discrimination in her community, and the neighbours were worried about buying milk from someone who was HIV positive. She says that even though the levels of stigma and discrimination remain high in her community, life still becomes easier if you are open with your status and eventually she gained her customers back as well as her market has grown since.
“The women’s diary cooperative trained me and provided a market for my cow milk.” Faith collects her income from the cooperative on a monthly basis and it would count up to USD 250.00 . “It is a lot of money for me”, she says. Through the income, Faith can access a loan from the savings and credit cooperative and this has made it possible for her to start a farming business as well. “This year I planted three acres of maize and harvested up to 48 sacs of 100 kilos. I also cultivate vegetables and I have a farm of plantain. I get all the nutritious food recommended by doctors from my own farm. I use part of the money to pay for school fees of my two nieces.”
Faith is also a chairperson of a group of seven women and men who organized themselves to start up a tailoring business to generate income. The women’s dairy cooperative is also a guardian of this group and the initiative started as a result of a series of training from the ILO Start and Improve Your Business training, also granted via the cooperative and where HIV is mainstreamed. Faith shares her knowledge through peer education on a range HIV and AIDS subjects and help women and men in her community who live with HIV to start income generating activities. Conquering stigma and discrimination from neighbours and community members is challenging: “when I knew my HIV status, I made it open and decided to be an agent of change and encourage other women and men in our community living with HIV to have hope so that they can live just as long as any one else”. Faith is a confident and independent woman and stresses that “hard work towards self acceptance of living with HIV” has given her a long life, and the strength and independence comes from the support she gets from the cooperative. Faith is one of 1,600 women and men that in 2009 had accessed the Start and Improve Your Business training through the programme in Tanzania, and she says that the training and the support she received from her cooperative has empowered her to live a life with quality.
Print
Email