More rivers or Smaller seas?

Offering exclusive support to PLWHA (People living with HIV/AIDS) is, perhaps not surprisingly, a bit of a controversial activity in Kilifi. For example, imagine this (If you can):

Your Sifia Bayo - a mother of 6 children aged between 1 and 12.  Between you and your husband, Alex, your income levels are unreliable and insufficient. For breakfast you have rice, no lunch and then dinner you have some maize shared for all the family.

You live in a small cramped mud hut, barely capable of fitting you all in. Despite the meagre shelter, there always enough room for Hunger and Struggle as well as frequent visits from Mr Sickness.  You attend mass everyday and thank God for your health and that of your family.

Your neighbour – Geoffrey and Mary Ocheino – also live in a small house with their 6 children.  However, Geoffrey has been diagnosed as HIV+.  Thus the Ocheino’s get World Food Programme support – Food for the month for the entire family and CSB (Corn Soya Blend) for Geoffrey’s to provide specific nutritional support.  This is called Prescribed Food by the doctors and the powers that be – it is called free food by the Bayo’s and the rest of the community.

So you ask me – how come, even though we the Bayo’s need food support as much as the Ocheino’s, we do not get it because none of our household is HIV+? Should I contract the virus so that my children can evict hunger from our house?

It’s an interesting one – HIV is a dreadful disease but thankfully, now with more available ART treatment, a person living with the virus can still enjoy a long and reasonably healthy life.  Of course that’s if they can get treatment, if not the face a horrible, slow and painful death – often alone.  Even if they do get treatment, the stigma follows them everywhere like a large pointed finger – the silent ringing bell screaming an accusatory 'unclean'. 

Hunger effects a child concentration and natural growth as well as leaving them open to infection and disease. It offers generous helping of stress and strain for the parents forced to struggle to put bread on the table.  It encourages families to seek income by what ever means possible.  The thing is, HIV is dreadful illness but families need food – today and get no food. Forget long-term debilitating illness - what about today and tomorrow.   If I’m positive I get food for my family and treatment.

Why is it only the people living with HIV/AIDS who get the food support?  Why are we left to carry the burden alone because we have not been infected?  Why must my child go hungry because we listened? These are the questions some people in Kilifi are asking and many more are thinking.  At the same time they are being fed messages on HIV/AIDS prevention.

The virus is killing Africa (Kenya is 9th in the list of most infected populations) by wiping out the most productive generation – most infected between 18-35 – therefore having enormous economic effects.  It leaves a country with 000’s of orphans -  there are 9 orphanages in Kilifi not including home stays like Zilpas – and no one knows how these children development will be effected and thus the communities they live.  It places incredible strain on the countries health and social services system and thus public services and the wider economy.

But it is one of several problems facing the continent and the country. Sometimes it feels a like a hose with many leaks but with only a small bit of tape to stop the leak. Stopping one leak means pulling it from somewhere else.

But sooner stop one problem then sit in your hands doing nothing right?

This morning I met 7 groups of Index clients (PLWHA – People living with HIV/AIDS) all of whom qualify for World Food Programme support. SCOPE are offering them Business Management and Marketing Training amongst support for other Income Generating driven activities. 

This is specifically what I came here to do – and it has been a very positive development for me in terms of meeting objectives. Over the past few months we’ve been mainly training and advising small micro businesses throughout the community in general. So I’ve done my practice on the regular poor and now polished my act for the sick poor!  Nice work.

The river always flows to the sea, but the sea is never full.

Location, Location, Location

We carefully meander our way in the light sprinkled gloom on a topsy turvey boardwalk– the wood sparse and uneven like the keys of an old badly made wooden piano. Below us the strange, dense spaghetti roots of the mangrove forest reach up and around us to thatch a thick roof of vibrant green leaves.

Journeying toward a brilliantly sunlit opening where a platform appears hovering on the edge of beautiful grey creek, blissfully sparkling under the fading evening light.

The sun, the colour of a brilliant huge mango, spreading a large bright golden tongue across the silver watery expanse, setting fire to the sky as it cautiously retreats behind the distant palm treed horizon.

In the wake of it’s magnificent departure, flamingos and herons arrive to join the silhouetted villagers sliding on canoes across the serene silver stage.

We had arrived at the home of Baso Conservation Group on Mida Greek.

It’s Saturday evening and our dinner table on this stilted platform provides a group of us 7 volunteers with a deliciously isolated spot for sundowners, a feast of seafood and opportunity to discuss a variety of weighty topics – your favourite Simpson's quote, who would you kill if you had one bullet? and your claim to fame.

Baso Conservation Group is a hugely successful purely community project that farms crabs so this makes this not just a heavenly spot  for a night out, but also genuinely effective and indigenous community support activity for the local village community.

Possibly as perfect a location as that can be found.

To be fair, our setting for most of the weekend was close on serene: the glistening soft ivory sands and tortuously beautiful turquoise ocean catering for our r&r needs; the sea-breeze decking of Ocean Sports, the conducive setting for reckless banter, inspirational event organising and ice-cold tuskars; and the large comfortable cottage of Marijani in Watamu village to recover (it’s hard work out here!) at night.

Returning to Kenya, you can sometimes get caught up in location; not where you are but where you’re not. Of course you miss people at home. However in this sumptuous spot on the mouth of a beautiful creek next to the Indian ocean, this is one (of many) location which Kenya provides so to make it easier for me to settle back in.

Watamu, Kenya – 27th/28th September: A great weekend, with great people in a great place.

Kwaheri Diana.

p.s. There was no sense in last week blog…this is the point: It makes no sense.