Ngozi Nwega lives down a dirt alley in a two-room concrete apartment in Benin City, Nigeria. When I entered her living room with HIV outreach workers from the health unit at the Archdiocese of Benin City, she was barefoot and smiling. She curtsied to me, showed me to the faded couch, and walked over and turned down the volume on the TV. The Curious George cartoon was much too loud.

Ngozi sat down next to me and poured her heart out: a forced marriage at 15, a husband who died after contracting HIV, a family that rejected her. Two of her children died soon after they were born. She became desperately ill. Nkechi, her oldest daughter, quit school to take care of her. Ngozi’s new husband – who paid for medical bills after she became ill – tried to strangle her, saying she would die anyway.

Ngozi told me this with the relaxed tone of someone reading the ingredients on a can of soup.
We’d only been there 10 minutes when the electricity cut out. The overhead fan stopped. And I started sweating. The room grew thick with humid heat. Perspiration poured down my back. This, I thought to myself, this is what Ngozi and the kids sleep in every night.

“The man returned me to my parents,” she continued. “On the way to the village, it’s a miracle I didn’t die. When I got to the village, everyone ran from me. Even my father ran away.”

The stigma of HIV is high in Nigeria. Many believe it’s a death sentence.

Maybe it was the heat. Or maybe the rush of memories overwhelmed her. But Ngozi lost it. She cried into her blue wraparound skirt, each memory pushing out more tears. But she refused to stop telling her story. It was a testimony, she said. It was cathartic, I thought.

But then she found the Archdiocese of Benin City. Catholic Relief Services supports their health unit and the team that works with HIV-positive Nigerians and their children. Vivienne, an outreach worker through the archdiocese, came to Ngozi’s house and gave her rice and beans. She took the kids to the zoo. She made sure the children’s school fees were paid. And that the mosquito net was hung and Ngozi takes her antiretroviral drugs.

We walked outside her apartment and all piled onto the decaying couch. I put my arms around Ngozi and her family. I couldn’t believe that this smiling, resilient woman next to me, this woman who is my own age, had lived through all this. I couldn’t believe she shared such an intimate story with me.
No matter what you are going through, you are not alone. Stay Positive!

Source: The Positive Story. http://www.thepositivestory.info/2016/11/the-positive-story-of-woman-living-with.html