empowerment

So I think my subconscious (or conscious?) bitterness towards my fried macbook has recently sucked away all my blogging energy... So lets start this back up. I'll try and catch up little by little...



Victory! All of these women (and a few men!) just graduated from a 3 day Treatment Literacy Training seminar. They are all HIV+ and live in the slum community of Kawangware.

Most of these women have had the virus for years now, but have had no idea what is it or what it really means... Apparently I didn't either:

Yes, HIV/AIDS is a plaque on the continent of Africa, and WAY too many people are dying from this malicious disease. BUT: did you know that people that are educated on what the virus is, how to control it through medicine, and how to take care of themselves, can live healthily for years and years and years? I didn't know that...

My friend Sylvia from City Harvest VCT (see earlier posts) has lived with HIV for over 18 years. You would never know. In fact, most of these people (like Mercy) are productive and healthy and full of joy for living. And maybe the most positive part is this: they are passionate about fighting this disease, educating others, and because they know first hand what its like, they are perhaps the most effective part of the anti-AIDS crusade.

As it was repeated many times throughout the seminar: "We are the problem, but we are the SOLUTION."


As optimistic as I was after learning that AIDS doesn't have to be the killer that the (RED) campaign so vaguely communicated to me that it was, and that these women have bright futures in front of them, it was still definitely a sobering experience to learn about other aspects of the virus.

One of the most difficult parts about living with the disease is that people who are uneducated about what it really is (which is almost everyone else, including the church), write these women off as sinful, dirty people. Most think that have been connected with witchcraft, or that the women will transmit the disease if they shake their hand or buy their vegetables from their stand. Kenyans believe some crazy stuff. Stigma... it doesn't go away.

And this was also sobering: of the 30 or so people that attended this training, there are hundreds and hundreds of people that have HIV, and don't know that it doesn't have to kill them. So they just let it. They fall prey to the fear, they do not tell anyone, they do not seek treatment. And yet, only a little bit of education can prevent this...

It was crazy to watch the women as their eyes and their actions and they voices communicated their first-time understanding of something so life changing. One women laughed as she admitted this was the first time she had learned family planning techniques... she had 12 children and couldn't feed all of them. One women explained that she had 8 children and no steady income. But activities like nutritional planning helped her understand that it is possible to feed a family, for an entire day, on 100 shillings, which is within her budget.

(FYI: 100 shillings is about $1.25... yeah. Take that the MickyDee's and ask for food for a day for your whole family)


It was empowerment, at its most inspiring...