20-year-old Paida Mutopo was diagnosed with HIV when she was only 11 years old. Paida had inherited the disease from her mother, Mavis, who’d had no idea that she was HIV-positive until Paida was diagnosed.
“It was a huge shock,” Mavis admitted, “especially since so many relatives had passed away from HIV. … I passed it on to my daughter, unknowingly, but that sense of guilt, it’s always in you – you know if she’s not well, you’re thinking, ‘It’s because of me.’”
It took Mavis several years to tell Paida the truth of her medical condition.
Knowing that she was HIV-positive changed Paida’s life significantly. “When I would go to school,” she recalled, “I could be walking in a corridor full of people and I would just hear someone shout ‘HIV’ or ‘die.’” No one wanted to associate themselves with Paida anymore, not in the cafeteria or on the school grounds.
After several years of enduring this treatment, Paida finally “came out” as HIV-positive on social media when she was 16. She was tired of people whispering behind her back and felt that making the knowledge public on her own terms gave her greater agency and authority over her life.
Although Paida was feeling more confident about herself and her medical condition, when she became pregnant a couple years later, she was “so scared.”
“When I found out I was HIV positive, I never thought I was going to have a child and that was something I wanted in my life,” Paida recalled, “If he had been positive I would have felt so bad, I would have just blamed myself.”
Once Paida realized she was pregnant, she went to the doctor regularly to screen her son for the disease and receive help to manage her disease during pregnancy. Paida’s doctors prescribed her with HIV medication and provided her with antiretroviral therapy in hopes of keeping her from spreading the disease to her son.
Just five months ago, Paida gave birth to her healthy son, Kai.
Kai does not have HIV, and Paida could not be happier.
Although she is now a mother, Paida continues to speak out and share her personal story in hopes of altering people’s mindsets against HIV. She hopes to attend university in the near future to build a better future for herself and her son.
