On Thursday 18 September 2003 Melita’s world changed for ever: the doctors informed him that his mother had AIDS and would shortly be dead. They went on to tell him that his father might be infected, along with his mother’s co-wives, and Saitoti, his youngest brother who was just off the breast.

Melita is a Maasai boy of sixteen, the eldest of nine, and a fine young man in anyone’s book. His mother, Naserian, is the centre of his universe, but sometime last year she began to grow sick. In his attempts to find the cure, Melita sold five of his seven cows (his means of subsistence) and left school to focus full-time on getting her well. In early September he and his father – an old man and weak himself – carried Naserian from their village to the hospital. She had been weak and confused for some time and it was clear that her condition, whatever it was, was getting worse.

Young Maasai Man. Credit: Chris Tyler

The doctors counselled Melita because, unlike his parents, he speaks Swahili, the lingua franca. So they told him the news and then they sent the family home. Back in his village Melita finds himself lost. HIV has been creeping invisibly into his community, hiding in one host before spreading undetected to the next. The long dormant period between infection and the onset of AIDS-related illnesses means that few people in Melita’s community are aware of what is going on; AIDS deaths are as yet rarely seen and largely unrecognised. Support networks are not in place.

At home Melita has no access to information, nobody to turn to and the weight of the world upon his shoulders. The cows have been sold, his mother is dying, his siblings are hungry, other members of his family are likely to be infected and it is down to him to tell them this news. But just how, when, and even if, he will be able to, he does not know.

On Sunday 21 December 2003 Melita’s mother, Naserian, finally died. During the last few months of her life her flesh had literally wasted away and opportunistic infections had taken full advantage of her dying body. They first attacked her brain, causing dementia, and then her central nervous system. The lymph nodes behind her ears were permanently swollen, and rashes and sores covered her body.

Further infections attacked her body deep inside and the only sounds she made were those of a persistent, yet ineffective, cough, and frequent high-pitched groans of intolerable pain. By November Naserian appeared no longer to recognise those around her. At this time Melita walked north into Kenya, where he was not known, and there for £75, the price of a cow, he bought a £1 bottle of vitamin pills, which would, the man had told him, cure his mother of AIDS (and cancer, and TB, should she have those as well).

When he reached home Melita found that a thick, white and painful fungal infection had covered his mother’s mouth, tongue and throat. She had stopped swallowing the small amounts of milk and soup that the children had been managing to spoon into her half-open mouth. A few days later her eyes – which had long been devoid of messages – lost the ability to make contact with the eyes of her son. And then she died.

This long, slow, demoralising and frightening process was watched by her nine children, who worked together to run the house and care for their dying mother. The children’s father, a good man, and utterly devoted to Naserian, had found himself in a situation he could not put right and only added to the children’s distress by escaping, whenever possible, into drunkenness. From there he would implore his wife to get up from her deathbed and continue with her life, before crumpling into sobs, when, each time, the inevitable silence replied.

Melita has not felt able to discuss the true nature of his mother’s illness, nor the possible future implications, with anyone from his home. But all the time he is waiting and watching – living in fear of any signs. Unlike most Maasai Melita already has an idea of what might be ahead. What he doesn’t know is how he, his family, or his community will cope.