Ruth, 30, is married to James, also a client of Untold's program. Together they've been married more than ten years and are raising five children—two boys and three girls.
Ruth discovered she was living with HIV in 2017, during a routine test required of expectant mothers in Kenya. "Turning positive is the worst news I ever received," she recalls. "I felt like the world had ended and I was not worthy of living." Afraid of how her husband and community would react, she kept the news to herself for a time.
In 2015, while in labor with her daughter, Ruth experienced a hip dislocation after the motorcycle carrying her to the hospital was involved in a road accident. Without immediate access to the medical care she needed, she lived with the injury and significant pain for seven years, unable to walk without the aid of a stick while still carrying the full weight of caring for her home and children.
During this same period, Ruth also faced deep stigma in her family and community. Neighbors distanced themselves from her, and she says people avoided helping her, treating both her HIV status and her disability as a burden they didn't want to carry. When her husband was later sent to jail, Ruth found herself raising their children largely on her own.
Ruth had also stepped away from church for five years, after feeling judged and out of place in her previous faith community over how she dressed. Between the cost of basic necessities and her declining health, she says she reached a breaking point.
Ruth was introduced to Untold through her local health facility and joined the program on November 30, 2023. She came looking for food support, income-generating skills, community, and help for her leg.
Through Untold's spiritual curriculum, Ruth and her husband studied with Pastor Kimanthi, and Ruth accepted Jesus as her personal Savior, later attending discipleship classes. She now attends church regularly with her children.
Ruth's care team also connected her to surgery for a hip replacement, which she underwent in April 2024, followed by four months of physiotherapy. Untold's Medical Endowment Fund covered a total of Ksh 18,050 in costs, including a year of NHIF coverage, medication, home-based care, and transportation for reviews. By the time her cohort graduated in August, Ruth was walking to the center with minimal pain and had resumed full participation in program activities. Today, she walks almost entirely without support.
Ruth says the one-on-one counseling and group therapy gave her a place to be heard and a community that never made her feel like a burden. "My fellow clients took me like their own sister," she says. Through Untold's seminars, she learned to make soap for her own household and eventually to sell. "Am proud my children don't go to bed without food," she says.
Ruth hopes to grow a business selling detergents and tie-dye products, and she's found a new sense of purpose in encouraging others living with HIV to accept their status.
"HIV does not kill if you adhere to medication and live a healthy life," she says. "It is not over until God says it is over."
To Untold's donors, Ruth offers her thanks directly: "A big thank you because I can walk again and work for my children because of your generous giving."