At a local bar, we meet nine women from Kirundo. They’re all sex workers who became friends through Association Burundaise pour le Bien-Etre Familial's (ABUBEF) peer educator project. Yvonne is 40 and has known that she’s HIV-positive for 22 years. After her diagnosis she was isolated from her friends and stigmatized both in public and at home, where she was even given separate plates to eat from. “I started to get drunk every day,” she says. “I hoped death would take me in my sleep. I didn’t believe in tomorrow. I was lost and lonely. Until I got to the ABUBEF clinic.” ABUBEF has supported her treatment for the past six years. “I take my pill every day and I am living example of having a good life even with a previous death sentence,” Yvonne explains. “But I see that the awareness of HIV, protection and testing provided by ABUBEF is still very small.” Yvonne became a peer educator, speaking in public about HIV awareness, wearing an ABUBEF T-shirt.  The project spread to the wider region, and volunteers were given travel expenses, materials and training, along with condoms for distribution. But funding cuts mean those expenses are no longer available. Yvonne says she’ll carry on in Kirundo even if she can’t travel more widely like she used to. Her friend, 29-year-old Perusi, shares her experience of ABUBEF as a safe space where her privacy will be respected. It often happens, she says, that her clients rape her, and run away, failing to pay. Since sex work is illegal, she says, and there’s no protection from the authorities, and sex workers like her often feel rejected by society.  But at ABUBEF’s clinics, they are welcomed.

Monica has never told anyone about the attack. She was pregnant at the time, already had two teenage sons, and rape is a taboo subject in her community in Burundi. Knowing that her attacker was HIV-positive, and fearing that her husband would accuse her of provocation - or worse still, leave her - she turned to a place she knew would help.   ABUBEF is the Association Burundaise Pour Le Bien-Etre Familial. Their clinic in Kirundo offered Monica HIV counselling and treatment for the duration of her pregnancy.  Above all, ABUBEF offered privacy.  Neither Monica nor her daughter has tested positive for HIV. “They saved the life of me and my child,” Monica says. “I hope they get an award for their psychological and health support for women.” Three years on from the attack, Monica, now 45, raises her children and tends the family farm where she grows beans, cassava, potatoes and rice. She’s proud of her eldest son who’s due to start university this year. She educates her boys against violence, and spreads the word about ABUBEF. Monica speaks to other women to make sure they know where to seek help if they need it. Her attacker still lives in the neighbourhood, and she worries that he’s transmitting HIV. But the ABUBEF clinic that helped Monica is under threat from funding cuts. The possibility that it could close prompted her to tell her story.    “This is a disaster for our community,” she says. “I know how much the clinic needs support from donors, how much they need new equipment and money for new staff. I want people to know that this facility is one of a kind - and without it many people will be lost.”