BATTLING THE AIDS SCOURGE
Kanini Evans Kariuki
May 01, 2009
THE atmosphere is cool, relaxed. Heavy clouds, a harbinger of heavy rains gather in the skies. Then the rain comes suddenly and forcefully, beating a monotonous tattoo on the roofs. Thunder crushes, cracks and crushes again. Then the rains gradually subside and peter out into a drizzle, warm and soft and quite welcoming. A sharp, brilliant rainbow arches, against the background of the bright, placid evening.
I am at an Eldoret hotel, interviewing Peter Kimani, the Executive Director of Focus international club, an Eldoret town-based NGO that has embarked on a spirited, all-out war against Aids. Eldoret town is located in the Rift Valley region of Kenya.
During the interview, Kimani is accompanied by other officials of the organization- S.K Kamau, Peter Ndungu, Tom Mudegu, Musa Kiptum, Rose Kisama and Farida Said. We are all sipping sweet espresso coffee and appeasing ourselves with sumptuous snacks.
Focus International has embarked on a program to produce a platform for the youth to address Aids- related issues with a view to minimizing cases of the dreaded disease.
In the same vein, the Soilders of Peace International Association in the local chapter,Kenya, and the regional liaison office for the Association internationale de´ Soldiers de´la pax (AISP) which is an NGO in consultative status (category 1) with the social and economic council, has launched an outreach and HIV/AIDS programme to support victims orphaned and widowed by the scourge from veteran military families in the Rift Valley part of Kenya.
The programme is aimed at supporting families whose breadwinners passed on as a result of the pandemic, as well as those who lost their lives in the course of peace.
Speaking during one of the functions to launch the initiative in the Rift Valley province, the organization´s President and East and Central Africa regional representative Mr. John Chesum, encouraged serving military officers to speak out openly over the reality of the deadly malady in the camps, in order to help minimize loss of talented offices from the forces through the scourge.
Coming back to Peter Kimani, and his Focus International group, the man has been spearheading over 300 members of his organization in battling the Aids pandemic in all areas of Eldoret town, which is the home town of retired Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi.
The group spearheaded by Kimani has been organizing workshops, poetry, dances and other drama in the fight against the Aids scourge.
And the drama has clearly been a real enactment of the hazards posed by the epidemic and a representative of what is happening in Kenya.
The disease has been decimating hundreds of people in Eldoret town and Rift Valley province in general of late, confining many others in local hospital beds, besides orphaning many children.
And touched and clearly moved by the plight of Aids orphans in Eldoret and the shocking local Aids statistics in the area, Kimani and his group has been causing a stir in the town, moving up and down all over, in schools, churches and other institutions, and educating local residents on the dangers of the disease and how to steer clear off it.
Kimani has become the man of the moment in Eldoret town. You need to meet him to learn him as he battles against the disease with vigour, vitality, zeal and zest.
He and his group has been pulling crowds who have found the opportunity to lament over the hundreds of local people who are being consigned in many Eldoret graves. It has been a sorry state of affairs of late and a big concern for the likes of Kimani.
Confident, composed, determined, organized, eloquent, articulate and assertive, Kimani has been vigorously embroiled in an anti-Aids campaign in Eldoret with the message that to successfully defeat the pandemic, the youth must be wholly and effectively involved.
They must be empowered both economically and socially.
Talking to The Press during the interview, Kimani states that the focus of his organization, Focus International club, is to help control the escalation of the scourge among the youth and adult population, as well as to participate in Aids awareness and poverty eradication at community level.
The club, he stressed, will focus on providing holistic support and opportunities for the youth, using a youth-oriented strategy that attempts to meet the needs young people themselves identify.
"As part of my organizations strategy our program aims to have the youth focused on matters of sex. The organization sees a focused member as one who abstains from sex, and to those who are married, remain faithful to their relationship", Kimani tells this writer raising his hands in a gesticulative gesture, eyes narrowed into penetrating slits.
A pregnant silence follows then he adds: "Inspired by the principle that individuals and organizations must work together to produce sustainable innovations, and to tackle HIV/Aids and other livelihood crisis in poor urban and rural communities, my organization is working with Kenyans living abroad particularly in California, New York, and New Jersey where they have also formed their focus clubs.
They have pledged to be mentors to both primary and High school students, and to tap any resources available to help them in their school work".
How can concerned individuals and groups better address the issue of HIV/AIDS and youth from an angle that takes on the pandemic in the 21st century?
"By propagating behavioral changes!" Kimani hastens to remark and quotes the parable of the boiled frog to illustrate the repercussions of ignoring or being apathetic to calls for changes.
Kimani´s quotation of the boiled frog parable sounds as intriguing as a cryptic clue of a crossword puzzle:
"If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if you place the frog in room temperature water and don´t scare it, it will stay put. Now, if the pot sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very interesting happens".
Kimani continues: "As the temperature rises from 70 to 80 degrees F., the frog will do nothing; infact, gradually it will show every sign of enjoying itself".
He adds: "As the temperature gradually increases, the frog will become groggier and groggier, until it is unable to climb out of the pot. Even with nothing restraining it, it will just sit there and boil. Why? Because the frog´s internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival, is geared to sudden changes in its environment and not to slow, gradual changes".
Outlining the state of his Focus International Club, Kimani indicates that the organization mission statement is: To educate and work with the youth in Kenya to help them better understand Sexual Health with particular emphasis on HIV/AIDS, to be committed in being a stand in the fight against the disease and to work out modalities in the reduction of it´s incidence.
Kimani further told the press that the Organization was focusing on the youth because they were particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and continued being seriously affected by the epidemic.
"Young people yield to pressure to exchange money or goods for sex, and are also sexually preferred the older generation. Young women are more than twice likely to be infected than men of the same age group", says he.
He contends that when young people migrate to find work they increase their chances of risky sexual behavior and due to poverty they are likely to leave sexually transmitted diseases untreated which increases their chances of contracting the HIV/AIDS virus.
"And besides, the youth do not have access to information and they also lack good role models and appropriate recreational facilities, contributing to the lack of knowledge to facilitate the pandemics risk reduction", he says.
His organization, he stresses, aims to integrate AIDS awareness into the youth livelihoods.
Other measures include strengthening the capabilities of small multi-level marketing firms (direct sales firms) so that they are able to co-ordinate their activities better and employ more youths.
Among the objectives of Focus International, Kimani points out, is to identify youths training needs, develop appropriate curriculum, plan the training program and identify and assist in setting up, re-organization or improvement of vocational training institutions with a view to enable them engage in gainful entrepreneurial activities.
Other objectives of Kimani´s organization is to promote activities supporting behavior change and participation through information dissemination, using advocacy, social mobilization and program communication in order to achieve social development benefiting the youth.
It also seeks to support the identification, research and analysis of social-cultural practices that may inhibit or support the fulfillment of the fight against AIDS, and assist the design of strategies to address inhibiting practices.
The organization also strives to support the government in the effective implementation of existing policies to tackle HIV/AIDS issues among the youth.
It targets Kenyan youth aged 14-35 years for sensitization on the dangers of the scourge, and particularly in view of the fact that poverty reduction is an important competent in the combat against the disease.
Kimani´s organization also seeks to identify an advisory committee consisting of teachers, students and community leaders in Eldoret to fight AIDS, to identify schools that would be used as pilot projects, develop a strategy to identify the themes to be addressed in the pilot project and have schools discuss issues affecting them through discussion, poetry and friendly competition.
The organization wants the youth to become healthy, productive and well-adjusted members of the society.
What prompted Kimani to embark on an all-out war against AIDS?
"I lost three cousins and several friends based in Eldoret and Mombasa, and it dawned on me that the youth were not taking precautions. I decided that I should be in the forefront in the battle against the scourge", Kimani says, while clearing his throat and massaging his right temple.
Married with two kids, he was born in Eldoret at a place known as ya Mumbi in 1970.
He went to school in Musingu High School, Western Kenya, where he completed his "A" level education in 1989. Later, he joined Strathmore College and completed his CPA1 and CPA2 accounts course in 1994.
Between 1992 and 1993, Kimani worked as a manager of Rift Valley outlets and was the organizations manager at only 22.
During the 70th anniversary of Kenya Breweries in 1993, he received an award as the youngest and best serving manager in the North Rift region.
Former Kenyan Cabinet minister Marsden Madoka, then Manager of Kenya Breweries, gave Kimani an award and told him": you are the youngest and best serving manager in the North Rift region this year (1993). I would like to meet you when you are fourty.
" Subsequently, Kimani quit Rift Valley Outlets, had short stints with some Nairobi based organizations before eventually deciding to set up the Focus International organization.
He told this writer that his group was involved in partnering/Networking with the World Aids body based in Connecticut, USA, with the hope of creating a global youth movement to combat the Aids Pandemic and Promote Aids education in communities in Eldoret and, to a larger extent, Kenya.
Kimani said that focus International is sending a team of volunteers from Eldoret to abroad for the Third conference on Global Strategies for the prevention of HIV transmission.
His organization also plans to have Patrons Focus clubs orientation seminars for all High Schools in Eldoret and Uasin Gishu district at large, with the aim of launching various focus clubs under the High Schools youth empowerment Programs.
"My view is that Aids should not be fought by professionals alone. It should be a shared vision and the goal should be to break contact with the deadly virus.
The fight against Aids should be people-driven since it does not spare professionals either!" Kimani emphasizes.
The interview over, we all rise up to part at the hotel. The evening is being encroached by the darkness.
Somewhere in the hotel, a music system roars into life and belts out, ´That´s The Way Love Goes´, a heart – rending number by American musician Janet Jackson.
Prolonged laughter breaks out as Kimani remarks with finality: "but certainly, Love should not drive one into the Aids Pandemic".
I am at an Eldoret hotel, interviewing Peter Kimani, the Executive Director of Focus international club, an Eldoret town-based NGO that has embarked on a spirited, all-out war against Aids. Eldoret town is located in the Rift Valley region of Kenya.
During the interview, Kimani is accompanied by other officials of the organization- S.K Kamau, Peter Ndungu, Tom Mudegu, Musa Kiptum, Rose Kisama and Farida Said. We are all sipping sweet espresso coffee and appeasing ourselves with sumptuous snacks.
Focus International has embarked on a program to produce a platform for the youth to address Aids- related issues with a view to minimizing cases of the dreaded disease.
In the same vein, the Soilders of Peace International Association in the local chapter,Kenya, and the regional liaison office for the Association internationale de´ Soldiers de´la pax (AISP) which is an NGO in consultative status (category 1) with the social and economic council, has launched an outreach and HIV/AIDS programme to support victims orphaned and widowed by the scourge from veteran military families in the Rift Valley part of Kenya.
The programme is aimed at supporting families whose breadwinners passed on as a result of the pandemic, as well as those who lost their lives in the course of peace.
Speaking during one of the functions to launch the initiative in the Rift Valley province, the organization´s President and East and Central Africa regional representative Mr. John Chesum, encouraged serving military officers to speak out openly over the reality of the deadly malady in the camps, in order to help minimize loss of talented offices from the forces through the scourge.
Coming back to Peter Kimani, and his Focus International group, the man has been spearheading over 300 members of his organization in battling the Aids pandemic in all areas of Eldoret town, which is the home town of retired Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi.
The group spearheaded by Kimani has been organizing workshops, poetry, dances and other drama in the fight against the Aids scourge.
And the drama has clearly been a real enactment of the hazards posed by the epidemic and a representative of what is happening in Kenya.
The disease has been decimating hundreds of people in Eldoret town and Rift Valley province in general of late, confining many others in local hospital beds, besides orphaning many children.
And touched and clearly moved by the plight of Aids orphans in Eldoret and the shocking local Aids statistics in the area, Kimani and his group has been causing a stir in the town, moving up and down all over, in schools, churches and other institutions, and educating local residents on the dangers of the disease and how to steer clear off it.
Kimani has become the man of the moment in Eldoret town. You need to meet him to learn him as he battles against the disease with vigour, vitality, zeal and zest.
He and his group has been pulling crowds who have found the opportunity to lament over the hundreds of local people who are being consigned in many Eldoret graves. It has been a sorry state of affairs of late and a big concern for the likes of Kimani.
Confident, composed, determined, organized, eloquent, articulate and assertive, Kimani has been vigorously embroiled in an anti-Aids campaign in Eldoret with the message that to successfully defeat the pandemic, the youth must be wholly and effectively involved.
They must be empowered both economically and socially.
Talking to The Press during the interview, Kimani states that the focus of his organization, Focus International club, is to help control the escalation of the scourge among the youth and adult population, as well as to participate in Aids awareness and poverty eradication at community level.
The club, he stressed, will focus on providing holistic support and opportunities for the youth, using a youth-oriented strategy that attempts to meet the needs young people themselves identify.
"As part of my organizations strategy our program aims to have the youth focused on matters of sex. The organization sees a focused member as one who abstains from sex, and to those who are married, remain faithful to their relationship", Kimani tells this writer raising his hands in a gesticulative gesture, eyes narrowed into penetrating slits.
A pregnant silence follows then he adds: "Inspired by the principle that individuals and organizations must work together to produce sustainable innovations, and to tackle HIV/Aids and other livelihood crisis in poor urban and rural communities, my organization is working with Kenyans living abroad particularly in California, New York, and New Jersey where they have also formed their focus clubs.
They have pledged to be mentors to both primary and High school students, and to tap any resources available to help them in their school work".
How can concerned individuals and groups better address the issue of HIV/AIDS and youth from an angle that takes on the pandemic in the 21st century?
"By propagating behavioral changes!" Kimani hastens to remark and quotes the parable of the boiled frog to illustrate the repercussions of ignoring or being apathetic to calls for changes.
Kimani´s quotation of the boiled frog parable sounds as intriguing as a cryptic clue of a crossword puzzle:
"If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to scramble out. But if you place the frog in room temperature water and don´t scare it, it will stay put. Now, if the pot sits on a heat source, and if you gradually turn up the temperature, something very interesting happens".
Kimani continues: "As the temperature rises from 70 to 80 degrees F., the frog will do nothing; infact, gradually it will show every sign of enjoying itself".
He adds: "As the temperature gradually increases, the frog will become groggier and groggier, until it is unable to climb out of the pot. Even with nothing restraining it, it will just sit there and boil. Why? Because the frog´s internal apparatus for sensing threats to survival, is geared to sudden changes in its environment and not to slow, gradual changes".
Outlining the state of his Focus International Club, Kimani indicates that the organization mission statement is: To educate and work with the youth in Kenya to help them better understand Sexual Health with particular emphasis on HIV/AIDS, to be committed in being a stand in the fight against the disease and to work out modalities in the reduction of it´s incidence.
Kimani further told the press that the Organization was focusing on the youth because they were particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and continued being seriously affected by the epidemic.
"Young people yield to pressure to exchange money or goods for sex, and are also sexually preferred the older generation. Young women are more than twice likely to be infected than men of the same age group", says he.
He contends that when young people migrate to find work they increase their chances of risky sexual behavior and due to poverty they are likely to leave sexually transmitted diseases untreated which increases their chances of contracting the HIV/AIDS virus.
"And besides, the youth do not have access to information and they also lack good role models and appropriate recreational facilities, contributing to the lack of knowledge to facilitate the pandemics risk reduction", he says.
His organization, he stresses, aims to integrate AIDS awareness into the youth livelihoods.
Other measures include strengthening the capabilities of small multi-level marketing firms (direct sales firms) so that they are able to co-ordinate their activities better and employ more youths.
Among the objectives of Focus International, Kimani points out, is to identify youths training needs, develop appropriate curriculum, plan the training program and identify and assist in setting up, re-organization or improvement of vocational training institutions with a view to enable them engage in gainful entrepreneurial activities.
Other objectives of Kimani´s organization is to promote activities supporting behavior change and participation through information dissemination, using advocacy, social mobilization and program communication in order to achieve social development benefiting the youth.
It also seeks to support the identification, research and analysis of social-cultural practices that may inhibit or support the fulfillment of the fight against AIDS, and assist the design of strategies to address inhibiting practices.
The organization also strives to support the government in the effective implementation of existing policies to tackle HIV/AIDS issues among the youth.
It targets Kenyan youth aged 14-35 years for sensitization on the dangers of the scourge, and particularly in view of the fact that poverty reduction is an important competent in the combat against the disease.
Kimani´s organization also seeks to identify an advisory committee consisting of teachers, students and community leaders in Eldoret to fight AIDS, to identify schools that would be used as pilot projects, develop a strategy to identify the themes to be addressed in the pilot project and have schools discuss issues affecting them through discussion, poetry and friendly competition.
The organization wants the youth to become healthy, productive and well-adjusted members of the society.
What prompted Kimani to embark on an all-out war against AIDS?
"I lost three cousins and several friends based in Eldoret and Mombasa, and it dawned on me that the youth were not taking precautions. I decided that I should be in the forefront in the battle against the scourge", Kimani says, while clearing his throat and massaging his right temple.
Married with two kids, he was born in Eldoret at a place known as ya Mumbi in 1970.
He went to school in Musingu High School, Western Kenya, where he completed his "A" level education in 1989. Later, he joined Strathmore College and completed his CPA1 and CPA2 accounts course in 1994.
Between 1992 and 1993, Kimani worked as a manager of Rift Valley outlets and was the organizations manager at only 22.
During the 70th anniversary of Kenya Breweries in 1993, he received an award as the youngest and best serving manager in the North Rift region.
Former Kenyan Cabinet minister Marsden Madoka, then Manager of Kenya Breweries, gave Kimani an award and told him": you are the youngest and best serving manager in the North Rift region this year (1993). I would like to meet you when you are fourty.
" Subsequently, Kimani quit Rift Valley Outlets, had short stints with some Nairobi based organizations before eventually deciding to set up the Focus International organization.
He told this writer that his group was involved in partnering/Networking with the World Aids body based in Connecticut, USA, with the hope of creating a global youth movement to combat the Aids Pandemic and Promote Aids education in communities in Eldoret and, to a larger extent, Kenya.
Kimani said that focus International is sending a team of volunteers from Eldoret to abroad for the Third conference on Global Strategies for the prevention of HIV transmission.
His organization also plans to have Patrons Focus clubs orientation seminars for all High Schools in Eldoret and Uasin Gishu district at large, with the aim of launching various focus clubs under the High Schools youth empowerment Programs.
"My view is that Aids should not be fought by professionals alone. It should be a shared vision and the goal should be to break contact with the deadly virus.
The fight against Aids should be people-driven since it does not spare professionals either!" Kimani emphasizes.
The interview over, we all rise up to part at the hotel. The evening is being encroached by the darkness.
Somewhere in the hotel, a music system roars into life and belts out, ´That´s The Way Love Goes´, a heart – rending number by American musician Janet Jackson.
Prolonged laughter breaks out as Kimani remarks with finality: "but certainly, Love should not drive one into the Aids Pandemic".
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