By Thomas Ngala
It’s not my fault but I pray that God reveals why I was born like this, says Gift Judah Keby as he reveals that he was born with HIV.
Growing up for the 22-year-old Lusaka budding artiste has been full of challenges.
He lost the mother when he was only a year and six months.
The young man tells Daily Star in an exclusive interview that he has never seen his father before.
“Growing up has been tough for me, very tough. It’s been like a journey that I am growing to learn about and painful one where my mother died when I was one year six months,” he said.
“I have never seen my father before. I am told he left my mother while I was in her womb. It’s not my fault by I pray that God reveals why I was born like that. I was born with HIV.”
Despite coming from a well to do family, Keby shares that his family does not support him.
He says he had to leave home because his brothers didn’t want him around.
“I hid my pain, all my entire life in art. My aunt, that woman that has been keeping me loves me but my brothers are against what I do. I decided to leave home because they would quarrel over me doing art every now and then,” he said.
“I just wanted to share music, I just wanted to write stories, I just wanted to act. My life has been problems after problems where you try to live in this house, because you don’t have a proper job, sometimes you try to put things together, I come from a well to do family but they can’t support my dream because they say this is Zambia you can’t make it. Just because my brothers are engineers and staff they just say no this guy can’t stay here.”
Asked about how he came up with the name Judah the Great which he uses for art, he said “my late girlfriend named me Judah the Great. She died in an accident. She accepted me for who I am. I told her I am HIV positive but she didn’t care about that.”