If I kept it to myself - World YWCA

If I kept it to myself
Pen Moni
Being a young woman living with HIV, I have committed
to make things happen and improve the conditions of
our lives, even if it takes a long time.
I am the second child in a family of five children.
My parents were poor farmers, and always
fought. When I was seven years old, my dad took
a new wife and would drink and hit my mother.
Every day, I would wonder why he treated her so
badly; my mother was a woman, not an animal!
When I was nine, my father raped me and
threatened to hurt me more, should I tell anyone.
I never told my mum but tried to tell my brother,
although he could not fully understand what I was
saying as he has a disability.
In 2001, I married a good man who was working
for the immigration department. We planned
to have three children and bring up a family in
a nice little house in the countryside. In 2002,
we both tested for HIV and the results were
HIV positive. We promised to take good care of
ourselves, because we needed to do things for
others who were infected and affected by HIV
and AIDS, in particular women. I don’t want to
see the rest suffer because of HIV and AIDS. I
know how it feels.
12
In 2000, I joined Oxfam Hong Kong and
the Womyn’s Agenda for Change Project in
Cambodia, as an assistant to the Sex Workers’
Empowerment Programme. People believed sex
workers to be bad, and not worthy of the dignity
of the rest of society. I knew that we should not
stigmatise against this group. They are women
and if we isolate them, they will remain vulnerable
to HIV and AIDS and other issues.
During that period, sex workers faced many
problems including stigma, lack of power
to negotiate condom use with clients and
harassment, and their health status meant an
end of income from brothel owners. Mostly, they