Vision

I am Vision from Mayani, Dedza, traditional authority Tambala, Sadukikila Village. I was infected with HIV in 2016. It was in Lilongwe, in 2015 after finishing writing my leaving examination PSLE. I got HIV from Amina, she was my fiancé but before we slept together, Amina told me that she was positive. I did not believe that because Amina was a beautiful girl. I told her that “You know what Amina, I am your husband and one thing that l know is that you are my wife, and I am not afraid, l will be with you”. So we slept together without any protection.

My journey was hard because at first l did not believe that l was HIV positive, and my health was ok. In 2016 l got tested and MACRO tested me and they told me that I was positive. I did not believe it and they told me to get tested again at their offices because at that time, they were doing outreach activities. But in 2017 I went to the hospital, which I had gone with my wife and she was pregnant. When I went to the hospital I was positive.

That is when l started to notice a physical change in me such as loss of balance, loss of memory and these are a few problems I was facing. This affected my health because l did not have strength. I do irrigation work and do a lot of manual work using watering cans and it is difficult to do some of the work. Yes these are some of the challenges I face and sometimes the work that we do with our health is not really in balance. We are happy with organisations like ITPC. However, sometimes we need some form of assistance, for example, like us who like irrigation if there is an opportunity of having other machinery like a tredal pump would be nice.