HIV/AIDS

I'm not sure how this entry will be received as I'm going to talk about sex, circumcision and other delicate matters !

It is supposed that the HIV virus entered and was spread through Kenya and Africa generally by long distance lorry drivers.   But in the late 60's when I first lived there, a doctor friend who was researching various diseases told us of a new illness in monkeys and great apes in the Congo and Ruwenzori mountains of Uganda, which he thought was passed one to another by sexual contact.  It eventually killed them.  It was also found in blood from those animals.  NOW, I'm not sure about this ... but I've heard since that this could have been the start of the HIV epidemic. 

Lorry drivers taking fuel and everything else under the sun from Mombasa on the Kenya coast up country to Lake Victoria/Kisumu, through the border into Uganda and then to Rwanda and the Congo are well known to have 'night stop-overs' with local girls ... indeed, some of them may have actually been proper wives.  And so, somehow, somewhere along the route, the disease entered the human population ... no need to speculate how !

And thus it spread through Kenya along the main road, and from there, outwards until the whole country was affected.   Nature is very cruel ... using sex, procreation to spread a disease.

Then when the epidemic was recognised, doctors and scientists started to study it, to find out how and why it spread ... and various anomolies were found.   Some of the prostitutes in Nairobi's shanty town of Banana Hill didn't seem to get the disease, even though they had multiple partners.   Some tribal groups, such as the Abaluhya, who lived close by the Joluo, had a low incidence of HIV, whereas the Joluo seemed to be at a much higher risk.  Why ?   What was the difference in peoples who lived so close together ?  

The Luhya people were tested for blood types, food they ate, water they drank and cultural customs !   And that was it !   The Luhya circumcised their little boys, the Luo didn't !  So doctors decided to ...

(look away now if squeamish !) ...

... collect circumcised foreskins and examine them microscopically to see how they differed from non-circumcised foreskins.   And they found the lining just under the removed skin was different to the skin that remained.  There seemed to be some mystery substance secreted which acted as a deterent to the HIV virus ... not always, but enough to make a statistical difference.   

So when these findings were told to the Joluo, many fathers decided to get their sons 'done' in an attempt to prevent them getting the disease when they became sexually active.   I haven't been able to find information or statistics to see if this effort has helped ... 

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Now Kenya has an estimated 1.5-2 million people living with HIV; around 1.2 million children have been orphaned by AIDS; and in 2006   85,000 people died from AIDS related illnesses.  

We will be working with people who have HIV ... some will be aware, some won't.   They all deserve our sympathy, love and understanding, especially if they want to talk to us about it.