Doreen Moraa Moracha, went to Babu wa Loliondo hoping for a miracle cure for HIV.
“It felt like a lifeline,” she recalls. “Babu was not just selling medicine; he was selling hope, and we were buying it. He spoke with such confidence. My mum and I, desperate for any solution, decided to make the journey.”
There were hundreds of people, says Moracha and “the process was simple: pay Ksh100, receive a cup of brown liquid, and believe that we’d been cured. There was no question of how it worked; there was only faith.”
But reality shortly set in. Doreen’s mum went for a test after three months, only to find HIV was still there. On the other hand, Doreen stubbornly stopped taking ARVs, believing Babu’s herbal cup would work.
“A year later, tests showed that my viral load was rising. I still refused to go back to the hospital, until one night, I woke up with a fever and severe swelling in my mouth. My mum rushed me to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with an opportunistic infection,” she added.
The doctors explained that her viral load was dangerously high, putting her at risk of AIDS. They gave her antibiotics to treat the infection, but the harsh truth was clear, she had to return to her ARVs without shortcuts.
