As a member of Kenya’s LGBT+ community – a country where the law states that “expressions of homosexuality” carry a maximum prison sentence of 14 years – Ruele Okeyo had a tough start to adult life. Rejected by his family when he first came out, he found himself homeless in Nairobi between 2018 and 2020. Then, in September 2020, when he was 23, he received a further knock, after testing positive for HIV.
“Being homeless and unemployed, I was already hanging by a thread,” he says. “Then when I had to deal with HIV… that was a really tough period.” Ruele went through all the different stages of grief – including anger, denial, and depression – before getting mixed up in serious drug use. “I remember just breaking down in the middle of the streets, I think two or three times, just overwhelmed by it all,” he says.
