Voices of 3 Africans in the Time of AIDS

Anne Owiti picks up the pieces.

A nurse and born-again Christian, she directs the Kibera Community Self Help Program in this dangerous slum of 500,000 outside Nairobi. She has three tiny classrooms for orphans, two counseling rooms, a medical office, a rabbit hutch and a dog that provides nighttime comfort for the little ones.

Eight inches away, across a masonry wall topped with broken glass, is the Nairobi Country Club.

“I founded this project in 1991. The women of this community need help. HIV/AIDS is my main aim, to work with single women here. But no way can you work just with women--their children come along automatically.

“So now, we have an orphanage too. . . .

“I pray to God every day to give me the strength to help my fellow women. We give them free treatment, those that need it. Most of our orphans come from patients who have passed on. This young woman, there, who you see. She is sick. She has four children. We have to help her find plans for her children when she dies. . . .

“Each week, in one way or another, 1,000 people get service here. The orphans who live here now are six girls and seven boys. In the days, we have school for 120 children, orphans or soon-to-be orphans. . . . There are 11 villages here. We serve seven, with a population of about 200,000. . . . I would guess that one out of four people in Kibera is infected with HIV.

“AIDS is not only a medical thing--it’s a social problem. It’s affecting the output of this country. . . . I think of this country, just as we try to build it up, the people with the skills and drive are dying. Every family is going to be touched.

“The experts of this country will soon die. And the country itself will . . .

“I’m thinking of it as the new slave trade. It is carrying our people away. It is tearing our people apart.”