With our Kenyan hit drama – Shuga: Love, Sex, Money two episodes in, we thought we would drop you all an exclusive.

Read Vio’s much talked about article SWAG Magazine featured in Shuga: Love, Sex, Money…

What Your Momma Never Told You

My father said everything in life is mathematics… even human beings. He said that we are the product of people who add to us and the sum of those who take away from us. I never understood this lesson until the day I discovered I was… HIV positive.

As a high school teacher education has always been a topic in our house. Education was serious and not to be messed around with. For as long as I can remember wanting to make my father proud, wanting to make my family proud has always been important to me.

After finishing school, I was really lucky and got a place at a good university. Everything was so exciting, so new and so much to be explored. I couldn’t wait to be totally independent and immediately found a place to share in the city with some friends.

Nairobi night life was a new world. All the people, music, clubs, drinks… the men! I’d never seen so much of it in my life and it was fun with a capital F. At school I was always the girl everyone teased about being too tall and too thin…now suddenly I was the one everyone noticed, I was being romanced, offered weekends out of town in 5 star hotels with men who made me feel like a princess…. and it felt good. Why not?!

I was young, I had the energy, I knew I was going to finish my degree and get a job eventually, but hey, why the rush? Life is short and I wanted to make the most of it.

All the partying meant I did not do any part time work to pay for my rent and clothes, but I quickly worked out that I could get my clandys to cover my costs. It was so easy to get cell phone money, weaves, even cash to put towards my rent.

My flatmate Sindi did not approve, she used to get on my case insisting if I was going to have multiple men in my life that I use condoms, she thought I was too wild.   Hey, I knew it could be dangerous and I’d had a few scares but I had never actually been hurt. I exercised, ate well and my life was FUN!

Then one night… I got carried away… again. I bumped into an old boyfriend, more like a friend with benefits if you know what I mean. I had far too many ‘panty removers’, we got totally wrecked, I remember driving through Nairobi at night, the wind in my hair, not a care in the world. And the rest is blank, actually I often blanked out when I drank a lit.

Little did I know that the feeling of freedom was about to come to an abrupt end. My life changed. I’d soaked up too much. My friend with benefits didn’t know that he was HIV positive. You see, he like me had been soaking up a bit too much of Nairobi too.

When I was diagnosed positive, I felt awful for a few weeks. I cried. I shouted. I was just so mad at myself, at him. I thought it was the end of my world. But somewhere in the back of my mind, through all this, my dreams were still floating around. I still had things I wanted to live for. I had friends I could be open with and talk to, and they stood by me. Even Sindi who could have said “I told you so”, did not. She came to counseling, she stuck with me. And I had my family… I hadn’t told them yet… but we were still close.

I knew when the time was right I would tell them and I hoped that they would stick by me. I realized that I could have everything I dreamt of, just not in the same way as I had been going about it. Real freedom does not come from getting drunk and sleeping around. It comes from making the choices that are best for you.

So my life changed and I’ve never felt better. Crazy right? No, now I am in control. I date, I go clubbing, I dress up and I look good! Now though, I don’t order a cosmopolitan, I order a virgin cocktail. I don’t sleep with men on the first date, I now have a 10 date rule and I’ll tell you something, it’s helped me keep out all  the dodgy men.

If I make it to the 10th date I tell him my status, so he can make a choice if he wants to keep dating me before we take it to the next level. My T-cell count is now the same as that of someone without HIV.  My life hasn’t stopped, I still have fun, but my priorities have changed and my life is actually better for it. Being HIV positive has not ended my life. It’s made it me more positive about it.

Life is like mathematics. We’re not only the product of what people add or take away from us but also what we add and take away from our own lives.

What do you think of Vio’s post? And to what extent do you agree with her final sentence above?