Cohort 2025 Member
Zeddy's Story
“None of us said anything at first. We just looked at her and smiled.”
For almost thirty years, Zeddy never took off her headscarf. It was a shield, a constant coverage she felt she needed to protect herself and hide her pain.
Alice (Zeddy) was assaulted during a laundry job. Later she learned she had been infected. For a long time she blamed herself more than the person who harmed her. She stopped going to the clinic. She locked herself inside the house. Her children struggled to contain her. After months of missed appointments, health workers traced her home and found her close to death.
Treatment restarted.
But restarting treatment did not put food in the house.
Years earlier, she and her husband had run a small hotel business. After he died, his relatives forced her out and sold the land. She left at night with six children and walked until morning without knowing where she was going. By daybreak she was near Narok. For days they stayed outside before someone offered a small thatched shelter in an isolated place.
From then on, each day depended on whether she found work.
She later worked eight years as a house manager. When that ended, she returned to door-to-door laundry work. The family moved often. Her children started school late or had to stop and restart. Two daughters did not remain in school and were married young.
One of her sons lives with mental illness. When she could not afford his monthly injection, his condition worsened. Some nights he chased everyone out of the house. Some nights she slept outside.
When she joined the 2025 Women’s Resilience Circle, all of them - Alice and her sons - were living in one room.
Over that year, she stopped skipping doses because there was no food. She attended her clinic appointments. Her son received his injections each month. Her children remained in school without being sent home mid-term. One enrolled in a driving course.
Through the program she started a small tea leaves business. She began saving. Her goal is to build two rooms so she and her sons no longer share the single space they all sleep in now.
Seven months into the Women's Resilience Circle, she walked into one of our sessions without her headscarf. Her hair was neatly plaited. She was wearing earrings.
None of us said anything at first. We just looked at her and smiled, celebrating the deep healing and restoration that had taken place inside her.