My first week in Sofia, a small village in Northern Kenya, left me entirely confounded by the number of people who were “sick” around me. I heard people talk about so-and-so being sick. I heard the pastor ask the gathering at Sunday mass if anyone was “sick” and needed praying for. I saw men and women in the congregation raise their hands, and lower their heads. I met orphans who were “sick”. How did their parents die? I asked, in all my naiveté. They were sick, I was told. Then I saw a “sick” man die in a hospital bed. That’s when I understood what being sick meant around here. The young doctor under whose watch the old ailing man we had driven to the hospital – my host being one of the very few individuals with a car in the area – had died explained it to me. He shot me a baffled look and said “AIDS” in a drab tenor, one that hadn't yet transformed entirely into the unaffected, disinterested monotone that many of his seniors projected.

The man had come into his clinic a few months ago, complaining of illness after illness. Saying he had had no relief from his flickering health for the last two years, or maybe even a little more. The young doctor knew, in his gut, what ailed the man. His blood culture confirmed the suspicions – the man was HIV +ve. He went on to, as he has been trained to do of course, advise a course of treatment and a prescription of medication the man should immediately be put on. Turning to the wife, he suggested, in much the same breath, that she had better get tested, too. The thanked him for his advice and got on a bus that would take them home. They travelled the five kilometres or so in complete silence.

And that same silence would haunt them till their last moments together. That same silence will hold on to her desperately even after he leaves. Soon, she’ll start showing signs, getting sick. Unless one of the many churches has changed its view on the disease that must not be named by then and decides to get her help in procuring the medicines she so urgently needs. That silence will be her sanctuary when she’s rejected by her own parents, widowed and orphaned in the same breath. It will be her defiance as she sits, week after week, in church, dodging callous whispers about her husband, his other wife and her only inheritance from him – the sickness. It will be her fuel as she spends night and day and everything in between trying to get that one acre of land to cough up a few kernels for her to feed her family. It will be her regret when she puts her son to work when he should be put through school instead, partly because she can’t afford it and partly because she needs an extra hand to feed the mouths looking at her, every waking moment.

Her part in this losing battle might be mute, but it’s on no account silent, like her life.