Khalif Farah Shuriye, 76, has been given a new lease of life thanks to support from well-wishers, after living for 10 dark years abandoned by family and society because he has HIV/AIDS.

Radio Ergo shared Khalif’s story in January 2022. Since then, listeners and well-wishers have been contributing cash and have raised $1,400 up to now to build him a better life.

He moved out of his leaky old shack in Digfeer, in Mogadishu’s Hodan district, and now lives in an iron-sheet house with a toilet. He spent $600 of the donations he received to build this house.

He is also able to buy good nutritious food as advised by doctors and no longer has to rely on the little that his neighbours used to give him.

“My life has changed a lot, I am better now. I get food, and I am no longer rained on. I now have a better life. I am just like everyone else on other things, and I thank the Somali brothers who have helped me,” he told Radio Eergo’s local reporter.

Khalif has bought 50 chickens and since February has been selling around 25 eggs a day earning $3-4. His house has been installed with clean running water and electricity, thanks to a well-wisher from the UK, who has been paying $15 every month for the utilities.

“Darkness and light is not the same, the electricity has helped me a lot. I have got water; I used to have to carry jerry-cans of water or ask the children to carry them for me. Sometimes I wouldn’t cook as had no water but now I have water in my house. I use the water when I need, I store some of it, I can take a bath and wash my clothes,” he said contentedly.

Khalif said some of the people who helped him include old relatives and friends who disappeared during Somalia’s civil war.

For a decade, he has been subjected to hate and stigmatisation by family and outsiders alike due to his HIV positive status. Many people he should have relied on in his old age turned their backs on him.

However, he has recently re-established relations with his neighbours, who come over to ask for small favours such as water, electricity, or fire. It makes him happy to be closer to people.

Khalif hopes to grow his chicken business and introduce new ideas so that he can pull out of the despair he has faced in the past 10 years.

“I want to make some savings, because I am a sick person, I am [HIV] positive, and if I sit just talking to myself I won’t get better, so if am taking care of something else I become active,” he said.

Khalif still gets free anti-retroviral drugs from the Somali Red Crescent although when they are out of stock he buys them himself from local pharmacies.

Khalif tested positive in 2012. He suspects he was infected with the virus by his mentally ill wife who had suffered brutal rape by an armed group. His wife died in 2010 of illness.

Source: Radio Ergo