I also just wanted to let you all know that I have written an article which will be published in the Catalyst, CANFAR's annual magazine.  I will be posting/blogging when the article is published and available to read.

Back Home

I am back home now and have been for a few days.  It has been a tiring week (due to jet lag I presume) and I have been getting reacquainted with my life at home.  I am certain the lessons I have learned through this experience will stay with me forever and my passion for CANFAR and their mission to end HIV/AIDS is stronger than ever.

I will be participating in CANFAR events throughout the summer and the upcoming year and I will be posting on Facebook and in this blog when there is an event of interest I would like to share with you.

I want to say thank you once again to my sponsors who made this trip possible.  Each and every one of you is making an impact on CANFAR and helping them make strides towards their goal of ending HIV/AIDS.  I cannot express how grateful I am to have people like all of you family and friends who are willing to support me in this endeavour.

Thanks to everyone for reading my blog - hopefully you've enjoyed it and maybe even learned something from it because I certainly learned a lot from my trip to Kenya.

Dancing with the Samburu people

Today was the bumpiest drive of my life. Literally 6 hours spent in a rickety old van driving up into the mountains to visit a remote mountain tribe called the Samburu people.  This drive was so worth it and was actually so much fun – thanks to our wonderful driver and guide Albert! The scenery was unlike anything I have ever seen – sprawling hills, those flat African trees that everyone pictures when we think of Africa (you know, from the Lion King) and we even saw a few zebras, giraffes. camels and lots of cows goats along the way!

In the 3 hours it took to get to the mountain tribe, we had seen less than 100 people along the way.  So when we saw a group of a hundred or so people dancing in a circle dressed in brightly coloured garments and beautiful extravagant necklaces in the middle of these deserted hills, we knew we had arrived somewhere amazing.

We pulled up and we were welcomed immediately.  They took our hands and pulled us into their circle to become a part of their traditional dance which they had choreographed in honour of the HIV + members of their community.  They were wearing their traditional garb which consists of the most beautiful colours and patterns.

 For the past 10 years the Mpala Mobile Clinic has visited this community once per month.  They provide medical education and treatment for the people living in this area.  They provide free HIV testing and provide treatment for all other ailments they can.  As amazing as this clinic is, it only comes through the area once a month and considering the nearest hospital is over 3 hours by car or probably a day by foot, this clinic is imperative.

Through the Mpala Mobile Clinic’s involvement the community have been able to learn that HIV/AIDS victims are just like those persons who are not infected and they should not be stigmatized.  These people are amazing and unique.  Instead of pulling away from and shunning the infected persons in their community they banded together and formed a support group. The group not only provides psychological and social support for one another but they also tend for the infected persons when they fall ill.  

The problem in this remote and impoverished area is water and lack of proper nutrition.  Although the Kenyan government has begun to provide anti-retroviral drugs for free, the drugs are less effective if they are not combined with proper nutrition which is near impossible with the constant drought and poverty being experienced in this tribe.

The most interesting thing I learned today was that this remote, amazing welcoming and lovely tribe is also quite progressive and liberal.  Women are considered to be quite powerful in this tribe, similar to men.  Their opinions and decisions are respected and with respect to children and family planning, their husbands respect their wishes. 

The men do not have sex with their wives without the consent of the women which is quite different than the majority of Kenyan tribes, especially in more remote areas.  If the women choose to stop having children and take birth control, they can get several types from the mobile medical clinic and are usually fully supported by their husbands. They can also have surgery to prevent them from ever having children again and once again, their husbands support them.

Their culture was beautiful and enveloping and I felt as though they really appreciated our visit.  The get less than 100 non-Kenyan visitors per year so this was a special visit for all of us and I certainly learned a lot. 

Emily

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not a religious person.  However, today I got a glimpse of what faith in god can do for people.

I met a woman who had more faith in god and belief in her own power to help others than anyone I have ever met.  This woman, Emily, found out she is HIV + around 2002 and immediately decided that she was going to live positively and she begged god to give her 15 years in order for her to be able to raise the children she already had and to help others with the disease.

It has been about 10 years since then and she has helped enumerable people.  She firmly believes that she has more than the original five years left in her life and from what I saw I can only imagine just how many more people Emily is going to help in her lifetime. She has certainly impacted me in a fundamental way – I felt as though I had met a person who truly lived her life for others.  She started a support group for HIV/AIDS survivors in her community in her own home because in 2003, not so long ago, she was chased away from the churches and the community centre in Nanyuki when she tried to rent space for her support groups. 

HIV/AIDS victims have started to band together to form support groups and help one another.  Since Emily first tried to get space for her group, the stigma has decreased significantly although it is clearly still present. The public still believes in some HIV/AIDS related myths that perpetuate the stigma such as the fact that lubricant on condoms can spread HIV/AIDS (not true) and that having sex with a virgin can cure a man of HIV (although obviously not true).

Now, Emily runs a place which acts as a nursery school for orphaned children, an HIV/AIDS support group and meeting area and a health clinic all on her small property in Nanyuki.  The clinic was also very interesting and surprising to our group because they were trying to place an emphasis on birth control so that these women can take some sort of control of their reproductive functions even though they still generally must obey their husbands in every other capacity.

As a feminist woman I have learned and seen many things here that have been painful to me as I think about these young girls, and women who live as second class citizens here.  They are forced to accept the fact that the African culture tends to allow the men to be unfaithful to their wives.  Most women are not even allowed to ask or insinuate that their men have been unfaithful and most women would not have the free choice to use a condom with their husbands. Female condoms are available as well but are no where near as readily available and are very expensive for the most part.

But I see hope – I have talked to some women who are speaking out.  They are taking charge of their lives and working, making money to raise their children on their own as, unfortunately, many of the men abandon their families.  I see how important education is for this process to develop and for all these women to have the choice of controlling when they have sex, how they are protected and when they have children.  The equality of the students at the local primary school and the immense intelligence of these young girls gives me hope in their future although it still pains me as I know many of them have experienced such pain and responsibility at such a young age.  

I still have hope that this younger generation can be better off than their parents and that HIV/AIDS can be eliminated as a complicating factor within the poverty.

Ol Pejeta camp

I have to start by saying that this has been one of the most fantastic few days of my life.  This place is unreal and this experience has already been way more than I could have wished for.

The internet access at the Ol Pejeta camp where our group is staying is limited so I will blog about a few of the most important and memorable things from the past few days because it feels like there has been a lot that has happened .

The camp is beautiful – it is located in the middle of a conservancy where all types of wild African animals roam free throughout over 100,000 km of protected nature.  We sit at a bon fire and we can see warthogs, gazels, antelope, zebras, baboons and even elephants! It’s unbelievable.  Today I finally got to see an elephant in the daylight up close – before that we has only seen them at night which is pretty nerveracking but very cool and exciting!

We spent 2 days working at the local primary school (Irura) in the rural outskirts of Nanyuki.  We painted classrooms, helped build a toilet by digging a hole (they dig it up to 150 ft deep!) and we taught some school classes as well.  These children were so incredibly respectful and well-behaved, they welcomed us with a school-wide (about 200 children) song and dance – this brought me to tears.  They were so happy to have us visiting them and just so happy to play with us.  We played games and sang songs with the kids and having the opportunity to teach them was unbelievable.  They were so smart and all spoke English quite well.  Some of these children are afflicted by HIV/AIDS and all of them are incredibly knowledgeable about this disease and what it does to the human body.  It was eye opening to me to hear them talk about HIV/AIDS like the school aged children in Canada might talk about the flu.  They knew the symptoms and they even knew about the attack on the white blood cells.  It just really reminded me that this is a prevalent part of their lives.

Today we went to the CDEC orphanage in Nanyuki.  All of these children’s parents have either passed away from HIV/AIDS or they have parents who are currently suffering with the disease.  Many of them also have HIV/AIDS.

When we got to the orphanage one of the older boys introduced the school to us and he gave us a tour of the grounds.  I was so pleasantly surprised that the orphanage was not a complete dump. In the past year or so there have been many donations to this project which allowed building to be built and proper cement ground to be put in and the classrooms were in good shape.  These made me very happy that even though these children have such a difficult life at least they could take some sort of pride in this place they are forced to call home.

Within five minutes at the orphanage I met a girl named Faith!! We bonded instantly and she followed me around all day! I was so happy to hang out with her and all the others. They are such special children who are a walking reminder of the strength of the human spirit.  These children have been through way more than anyone should have to experience in their entire lives. \

Faith gave me a tour of the grounds of the school and she showed me all the vegetables they grow in their garden and she told me all about her family and how her mother had died when she was very young and her father was very sick and she doesn’t know where he lives anymore and so now she and her two brothers live in the orphanage.  It just breaks my heart to know that these amazing individuals are living such an unfair existence and all I want is to figure out how to move forward.  What more can we all do from here to make an impact.

One of the things the group decided to do was go to a local bookstore and purchase notebooks, chalk, pens, etc for the schools in the area and so while we are supporting the local economy we are also providing these children with supplies they desperately need.

As a group we went to the local food market and purchased fruits and made a fruit salad for the kids in the orphanage.  They all waited politely and each came up and took their turn and took the fruit.  They were so grateful and so excited for this fruit.  It was no big deal for us to make this happen and to them this was literally a luxury.

These children have all been impacting me a great deal.  They are smart and hopeful and they see big dreams for their future and I really feel like we in the western developed world have a responsibility to help provide them with the resources to make their dreams happen.  These people need to have the tools to succeed on their own. We need to find a way to stop HIV/AIDS from killing entire generations of individuals and this is a possible and reachable goal with the information and scientific developments happening in the western world.  Putting these faces on this problem has really made me feel like this is a goal that we need to reach because we do have the power to help.

I'm also really looking forward to talking with some women about the stigma of HIV/AIDS in this country and how that impacts women and women's rights. Will write again soon hopefully.

Before I go...

Hi everyone - so I'm off to Kenya today and I am getting very excited!!  I don't know exactly what to expect but I know we will be staying outside of Nairobi in a place called Nanyuki, we will be visiting several orphanages, a primary school, a Nairobi hospital and a mobile medical clinic in a more rural part of the country.  In all these places myself and the other CANFAR student volunteers will be seeing how HIV/AIDS impacts these people and especially the children in Kenya.  We will be helping out as much as we can by building, painting and playing as well as anything else they need us to do.  We will also get to go on a one-day Safari and hopefully see some awesome giant animals like lions and elephants!

As I prepare to embark on this incredible trip I think about how this experience is going to shape the way I view HIV/AIDS and I wonder how I can ensure that I spread my knowledge and experiences from Kenya with my community at home...one way to share my lessons and experiences from this trip is through this blog!  My plan is to update this blog as I go through my days in Kenya, I will be posting stories and experiences and hopefully pictures (it's a bit dependant on the internet situation in the camp we're staying in).

I will try and update my Facebook status when I have posted a new blog entry. So please stay tuned ...