Kenya: Sex Workers Unite to Defy Stigma
KC Team, 7 April 2015 - The day the military raided Amina Danait's* village in Muguru na Nyori will forever remain etched in her mind.
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Soldiers had been deployed to search for alleged illegally held guns in her village in Northern Kenya. But they also found girls like Amina and, as she recounts, they raped them. "The soldiers paraded the men outside but girls and women were forced to remain in the huts," says the 26-year-old. "Then they raped all of us." "I started getting sick repeatedly," she says. "When the doctors at the Isiolo district hospital saw me several times they suggested I go for an HIV test." After confirming she was HIV positive, Amina could not go back home. "The people in the village say that if someone has HIV they are either bewitched or cursed," she says. "From there someone becomes an outcast." That was seven years ago. But the pain and grief refuses to go away. |