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Abstinence: Church fighting in vain?By Sewe K'AhendaThe Kenya government recently announced its intention to import 300 condoms “to fight Aids”. Predictably, the religious community, led by the Catholic Church, condemned this as encouraging promiscuity, especially among the youth and once again emphasized abstinence. But do Kenyans listen to the Church anymore?Recently, I visited my parents in Siaya, a rural district 600km west of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. I dreaded the visit for several reasons. I had not been there for one and a half years. My mother had written countless letter. She was finally convinced that her son, like many others, was “lost” in the city of lights. Then there is the distance. Six hundred plus kilometres of rough roads, not to mention rickety buses and the July cold. Well, I survived the journey and reached home at dawn. Amid the hugs and “I am so happy to see you,” mother forgot the distress that I subjected her to by not answering her letters and worse still, failing to send her money for chai [tea]. She claims that tea is one of the greatest legacies that the colonialist British bequeathed Kenya! Sitting down for breakfast, she started filling me in on what happened since “the many years you were away.” As usual, deaths took the lion's share of her updates. When she told me that my childhood friend had been buried three days earlier, I nearly told her to stop “punishing” me for not going home more frequently but then I remembered that she does not joke about serious matters like death. “Died from what?” I asked. She paused, sighed and then said, “Rabet, nyathina,” [The Big One, my son]. The “Big One”? Unsuccessfully, I searched my dwindling vernacular repository for what this could be. Seeing my struggle, mother said: “Ukimwi” [Swahili for Aids]. Shocked, I stared at her for a long time. But this was just the beginning. For the next three hours, she mentioned more people who had died of Rabet, most of them familiar to me. The whole village is in mourning. Nearly every home has buried a loved one who has succumbed to Aids. “In fact, we don't mourn for as long as we used to because we would run out of tears,” said mother. She stopped, looked at me and asked: “My son, do you now see why I am worried about you and that city of yours? Do you now see why you should come here more often, or at least write to tell me how you are doing?” I managed but a nod to show that I agreed with her. It was in that state of shock that I proceeded to “stand on the grave” [the Luo way of saying that you have come to pay your last respects after a burial] of my departed friend, Owiyo. Owiyo and I grew up together, went to the same primary school, fought other boys and bullied the girls. After primary school, while I proceeded to secondary school, Owiyo chose to “make money.” He was always very practical. “Francis, by the time you're through with four years of books, I shall have made enough money to feed you for two years,” was his constant bait for me to abandon high school. In refusal, I always hit back with one of my own: “When I finish high school, I'll make in six months more money than you will have made in four years.” Four years after high school, I joined university. Owiyo was shocked. He wrote to “inform” me that I was crazy. “When will you realize that you already are educated enough? Go on and waste your brain. As for me, I am even married now.” And then I remembered the question he had asked me and which now came to me with a new meaning: “Or you want to discover an Aids vaccine?” “Or you want to discover an Aids vaccine?” The question kept ringing in my ears as I stared at the fresh mound of earth under which lay the one who had asked it. “No, I am not at the university to discover an Aids vaccine,” I mumbled. Then I turned to face his widow, a young lady of not more than twenty-one years. Weighed down by her loss, she looked old and defeated. “What really happened?” I asked, determined to get the story first hand. As she struggled to answer, my mind flashed back to Nairobi where some interesting things had been happening the previous few days. A few days before I travelled home, the Ministry of Health announced it would import 300 million condoms to “strengthen the fight against Aids.” This, as expected, angered the religious community which took to the warpath immediately, the Catholic Church leading the pack. Bishop John Njue, chairman of the Episcopal Conference of Kenya, said that providing the country's youth with condoms was tantamount to encouraging them to be promiscuous. He reiterated the Church's position on fighting Aids: abstinence for single people and fidelity in marriage. The President soon joined the debate. Speaking to health professionals, President Moi said that he is ashamed to be importing “those things” to fight Aids. While admitting that condoms are not the solution to the Aids crisis, the President made a request that shook friend and foe alike. He asked Kenyans to abstain from sex for two years and see how effectively doing so would reduce HIV infection! If the matter were not so serious, people could have laughed. A popular FM station suggested, with a touch of humour, that the President's call be made a national rallying call, complete with a theme song. And the station was only too glad to suggest the song whose opening line is: “We are not making love anymore. We are not even trying to change.” This humorous distraction was welcome. For a short while, it helped Kenyans forget the frightening statistics: 700 people reportedly dying every day from Aids and related illnesses, and 2 million more walking about with the fatal HIV virus in their bodies. Add that to the hundred-thousand plus Aids orphans and you may understand why, though ashamed, the President will still import “those things” while asking his countrymen to abstain from sex.
Sound policy but little successKenya has one of the most comprehensive Aids policy plans in Sub-Saharan Africa. But as one local daily commented, the country is far from being a success story as far as containing Aids is concerned. Neighbouring Uganda is repeatedly held up as a model for other Aids-afflicted African countries.However, few of those in charge of the anti-Aids campaign in Kenya bother to remember that Uganda's success lies less on a “condom salvation” and more on a commitment by the political leadership to contain Aids. When Museveni realized that Aids was killing his people faster than it took them to understand his strange brand of party-less politics, and that he would soon have no people to vote Movement, he took a personal interest in the matter. He led his countrymen into an intensive fight against slim, as the disease is known in Uganda. With the same grit and determination that propelled him from a bush commander to president, he helped Uganda crawl from the abyss into which Aids had thrown it. There are many explanations for why policy plans have failed to reduce HIV infection in Kenya. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that a key ingredient of this failure is the disparity of messages concerning the best approach to combating HIV/AIDS, especially among the youth. On one hand is the Church and like-minded groups who believe that abstinence is the best way out of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To them, safe sex is anathema. On the other hand is a galaxy of non-governmental organizations that believes in an “all-options” approach, a no-holds-barred strategy to halt the deadly march that Aids currently enjoys in Kenya and much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Until two years ago, the government had sat on the fence on the subject of “safe sex.” Moi and his government kept a safe distance from the condom debate. This changed with the revelation that more than 500 Kenyans die everyday from Aids [the casualty rate has since climbed to 700]. The government declared the disease a national disaster and firmly embraced the “all-options” approach to combating it. Pressed for explanations, the President said that he governs a country of Christians and non-Christians alike and therefore, to close the door on condoms would be unrealistic and fatal. The Church rejected this approach and continues to do so until now. It maintains that abstinence is the best and only effective weapon against the pandemic. Few Kenyans have a problem with the truth of this assertion. The problem lies elsewhere.
Opinions from aroundCritics have termed the Church's insistence on abstinence old fashioned and unrealistic. A columnist with the Daily Nation, Kenya's largest daily, recently asked the Church to “step down from its moral pedestal and live in the real world.” While agreeing that the condom cannot effectively contain Aids and abstinence indeed is the surest way to beat the disease, the columnist that most Kenyans no longer listen to the Church. He contrasted the church's position on condoms viz a viz Aids with its stand on contraceptives and concluded that pious exhortations to abstinence cannot save Kenyans from Aids.A columnist for the Standard, another Kenyan newspaper, was even more critical: “The Catholic Church's declaration on condom use is, to say the least, hypocritical, parochial and preposterous. Abstinence is a lofty ideal, highly unattainable and has been relegated to the vocational holy realm.” Comparing the positions of the Catholic and Protestant churches on matters sexual, he had no kind words for the former: “…the Protestant churches have had a sober approach to counselling on matters of sexuality. The Catholics on the other hand, are caught up in dogmatic teachings, which prevent them from being dynamic and realistic.” Kevin Karanja, a 22-year-old student of journalism at Nairobi's Daystar University, supports the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms. According to him, the message is right but not the messenger. Karanja says that the Catholic church has lost its moral authority to preach on sex. “How can you exhort the youth to abstain from sex when everyday they hear and see priests and nuns who are doing the contrary? You cannot preach water while you drink wine.” Will the Church go the way of the government and non-governmental organizations and accept the condom as an alternative? This is very unlikely because it would be a radical departure from tradition. Yet, it is obvious that fewer and fewer Kenyan youth take the Church's exhortation to abstinence seriously. Not even a daily death toll of 700 of their countrymen will make them think otherwise. Perhaps, as Kevin suggests, it is time for the messenger to look at himself more carefully. Sewe-K'ahenda is a student of Mass Communications at Nairobi's Daystar University. He works for the New People Media Centre, a media house run by Comboni Missionaries.
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