From Jeers to Cheers-Former jailbird now a respected community member.

Teenage years usually come with lot of temptations,indecision and peer pressure.Many have made it through unscathed while others  drowned in its sea of madness trying to "discover themselves" in the race to adulthood.Here find the story of a young woman who turned her  life upside down but is now in the process of rebuilding it. 

When results of her HIV test turned out to be negative,Asha*couldn’t believe it. For a moment, she was paralyzed with shock and confusion, much to the amazement of the health worker attending to her.
Thinking her client had not properly understood the results, the health worker quickly took her through post-test counseling. But in the end they had to redo the test, just to assure Asha that she really was negative. This moment changed her life forever.

Looking back now three years after the incident, Asha gonge is still trying to fathom how she escaped the deadly virus. The 23 year old resident of Bangladesh, the biggest informal settlement in Mombasa, confesses to had lived a dangerous life. Then, she abused drugs during the day and prostituted at night. Children were terrified of her gang, peers feared and parents despised them. Now a respected peer educator in her home area, Asha tells stories of how she couldn’t pass by the market during the day for fear of reproach from other women who accused her for sneaking around with their husbands. Then, she says she would sleep with any man who offered her cash, with or without protection, openly exposing herself to HIV/STI infection.

"At first I resisted their advances, but the men kept asking for sex. I had needs with no one to provide for me since both my parents were dead. So I thought, instead of giving it out for free, why not make money out of it?" Said Asha.

But Asha was not always a prostitute.

Ten years back in 2002, then at 13 years of age, she  lost her mother to Aids. While trying to come to terms with her mother’s demise, she joined a gang of robbers and muggers. She would run away from school to smoke bhang and lazy around with them, a habit that did not go well with her dad.

 In March 2004, after months of trying to get her to leave the gang without success, her strict father personally frog matched her to Shimo la Tewa police station. The next day she was sentenced to an 8 month prison term at Shimo la Tewa correctional center for loitering and disobedience to her parents.

Prison life was hard at first, but with time she adjusted to the lifestyle of limited freedom, half cooked food and hard labor.

 She met inmates who committed far much worse crimes than hers. Most were murderers, others robbers and con-artists, it was a gathering of worst of worst characters of the society. Rubbing shoulders with such people spelled disaster for Asha; she came out worse than she had gone in.

At the end of her term, she went back home and faithfully cleared her primary education in 2005.

 Unfortunately she couldn’t further her education because her then ailing father, couldn't afford the fees. Asha then opted to work as a house help in Mtwapa to support her two younger siblings. It was while working at this sex tourism haven, that she learnt how to make money from sex. Later on when her employment was terminated, she went back home and continued with her trade-this time not as a street walker but a community sex worker targeting men from her neighborhood, who were mostly married.

After her father’s death in 2008, Asha  went from bad to worse. She went back to her old gang, a feared lot in the community. They would rough up anyone who dared oppose them, including members of a local youth CBO called Alfa and Omega which she later joined. They would rudely disrupt their peer education sessions and corner their members accusing them of spreading lies.

Alfa and Omega is a CBO based in Mombasa using magnet theatre to mobilize communities into positive behavior change in relation to HIV, Malaria, TB. Although outwardly she was against the group , deep down Asha was drawn to their initiatives especially the skits. (Short plays conveying a specific message)

"When she asked to join the group, we didn’t want her. We thought it was one of her gang's plot to mock us". Remarked Alfa and Omega chairman  Hassan. "But being the bully she was, one day she demanded to play the role of a mother during a skit performance at the market. She was so good that later on we took her in as a temporary”.

Unfortunately being in the group did not automatically change Asha. Unknown to other members, she still smoked bhang and prostituted -habits she attributes to pressure from her former peers. 

While mobilizing for Counseling and testing outreach in 2009, Asha decided to go for testing. Following the life she had lived, she as well as everybody else who knew her assumed she was HIV +, she went for the test just to confirm her fears.

However the outcome was different, something she did not expect-she was HIV negative. Three months later, her negative status was formally confirmed at the Catholic diocese Voluntary Counseling and Testing centre. From then on her life took a different turn.

Now a fully fledged member, Asha says the trainings, outreaches and trainings she has gone through while in the group have helped mold her personality. She is an influential member of her community, a symbol of behavior change. She uses her experience to persuade other youth to take beneficial paths in life. Together with the group, they have seen a decrease in spread of HIV, alcoholism, robbery, rape and domestic violence, vices that were once common place in the informal settlement.

 Most of her former gang members are in jail, others died as a result of either AIDS, police shoot outs or mob justice.

"Now whenever I pass by the market, instead of jeers I get cheers. Am happy for the progress i have made" Said Asha now widely known as mama mtaa in Bangladesh.