Word: munyiva
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Agnes Munyiva has never thought of herself as a lucky woman. Desperately poor, she works as a prostitute out of her home, a tiny tin-roofed hut on the outskirts of Nairobi. To feed her family of five she entertains as many as 10 clients a day on her children's bed, charging the going rate of 25 cents a trick. Her latest boyfriend just landed in jail, and her kids -- forced to play outside in the mud while their mama "has a guest" -- often go hungry on a skimpy diet of corn mash...
...Munyiva is a fortunate woman -- extraordinarily fortunate to be free of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Since the disease emerged in Nairobi in the early 1980s, the sexually transmitted virus has infected 90% of the city's lower-class prostitutes; but somehow Munyiva, 42, has avoided the scourge during her 13 years in that grim line of work. "Perhaps God knows that if he takes me away, my children would suffer," she says...
...Munyiva is one of a remarkable group of 25 Nairobi prostitutes who are the subjects of intensive scientific study. The fact that they have no symptoms of AIDS is not so amazing, since HIV can lie dormant in the body for many years before it begins its deadly work. What is surprising is that the virus cannot be found in these women at all; it apparently cannot establish itself in their cells...
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