Kenya

The section opens with a voice recounting the story of creation as told among the people of Kisii, in Western Kenya – the creation of a man and a woman, of their knowing each other and making children.

Elkana Ong’esa, an elder in the Kisii town of Tabaka and a renowned sculptor, takes us into the life of the town, its soap stone quarries and the work of its carving co-operative. AIDS has decimated the community, undermining production.

Elkana speaks movingly of the loss he and his wife have experienced: to their grief and confusion, their married daughter died of AIDS, leaving her children orphaned.

In the local hospital, people are singing to lend support to the bedridden.

Elkana summons local people to a baraza (a traditional gathering for community discussion) on the subject of AIDS and condom use.

At the gathering, a mother argues that condom education gives children the wrong message; older men talk of the challenges around using condoms; a father confesses to avoiding talking to his children about condoms; an elder laments the loss of traditions and blames condoms for the AIDS epidemic.

But younger men speak eloquently of how traditions need to change; of how prayers and hopes don’t stop sex in today’s world. They talk of how men are being brought to despair by the overload of orphans they are unable to provide for; how they fear for the future of their communities; how parents and elders need to assume new responsibilities in providing clear education about HIV and about the importance of condoms.

The bishop talks of prejudices that block faith leaders from facing up to sexual realities, inhibiting them from building condom awareness among their followers. He speaks of how he himself lives with HIV and of the need to spread education about condom use.

A Muslim widow talks of the loss of family members to AIDS, of how condoms could have kept them alive, of her own commitment to using them now – and how condoms are crucial in the context of the epidemic and sexual realities. Another woman echoes her thoughts; she says she and her husband are HIV-positive, and explains how condoms keep them well and strong. She calls on women to support condom use within their marriages.

People sing their responses and, as the baraza ends, they walk away. The anti-condom mother puts her arm around the Muslim widow; the old men are anxious as they digest what they have heard. We see a new day rising in the village and life resuming its daily routine, with the undercurrents of the HIV dilemma and the questions surrounding condom use running through our minds.