From Geoffrey to You! But Everyone Else Is Doing It

Friday May 1, 2009

But everyone else is doing it…

If you haven’t heard AIDS is an epidemic here in Kenya, if you didn’t know that you must have spent the last twenty years underneath a rock, this isn’t any new information. We have heard the statistics, heard about the two million AIDS orphans in Kenya, we have seen the commercials late at night showing children with swollen bellies, and we may toss in a few coins in the “World Vision” jar at the grocery store. We know it is out there, but maybe you don’t realize why.

The word “sex” is No-NO in this place. You don’t talk about sex. You don’t think about sex. You don’t joke about sex. You don’t ask questions about sex. You don’t take classes about sex. You don’t hear testimonies about sex. You don’t read books about sex. You don’t see movies with sex. Sex is taboo. The problem, however, is that everyone seems to be doing it. These high school students and college students, like anyone else their age, have hormones up to wazoo and don’t know what to do with them; so they have sex. The problem is that they haven’t been taught ANYTHING about sex or its dangers.

A common belief held by the children and the government is that if you wear a condom you wont get AIDS. The government actually promotes condom use for the prevention of AIDS, saying that it will keep you from getting AIDS, they buy about one hundred million condoms each year to give out. They think that if they are virgins they wont get pregnant. You can’t get an STD or pregnant if you aren’t an adult. The education level on the issue of sex is practically nothing and the little information that the government is feeding the youth is unreliable.

The risks of sex in Kenya are detrimental. If you contract the AIDS virus you are shunned by society. Friends and family will disassociate with you. Many people have AIDS but refuse to get tested because they don’t want to “know” they have AIDS due to fear of being a social outcast, meaning the continue to have sex and further the spreading of this disease while their bodies continue to waste away. It is a disease that causes you to die a slow and painful death completely alone, because your friends and family will have disbanded from you. Apparently guys in Kenya are worse than the guys in America; once a girl gets pregnant they get to stepping. As responsibility creeps around the corner the father of the baby is nowhere to be found. The sad thing is that this is the norm and is socially acceptable: the girl gets pregnant and the father leaves and doesn’t take care of the child. There are no laws about custody or child support, and if there are they are just like all of the other Kenyan Laws which lack any follow through. Most of the children I meet or hear about are raised solely by their mothers, which isn’t an easy life. If you get pregnant in high school, which SOOOO many girls here do, you get kicked out of the house and excommunicated from the family, meaning you are cut off financially so you lose your education and must start working to support this child. The problem is that there aren’t many jobs available for sixteen year old girls, except prostitution; which is also a BIG issue here in Masii. Knowing all of this, when the opportunity presented itself to preach on sex at this youth camp I jumped at the opportunity.

Imagine a small multi-purpose room that can fit about hundred people or so comfortably. Now cram a few hundred people into that room, so jam packed that people are wedged next to each other (We definitely don’t believe in fire codes in Kenya). The audience was composed of children about thirteen years old all the way up to mid-twenty year olds. I tried to start off by earning a few laughs and getting on their good side; I started off by preaching like a “Kenya” (which sounds like your stereotypical gospel preacher) and threw out candy. The children were hooting and hollering, it was great. I had earned their trust and the walls were down, I began to preach about sex with everything I had in me. I had this burden on my heart. Their lives literally depending on the words I was speaking. These lives would be forever impacted by these words, I was given an ability that hardly presents itself in Kenya and I had to make it stick or else they were doomed to face the same painful life and death of their parents.

As I departed from the podium you could have heard a pin drop. No one was asleep. No one was zoning off and suffering from space cadet syndrome. These people took in my words. The following days I was constantly approached by young girls and boys who were applauding the words that God had spoken through me and sharing how it changed their lives. Dozens of people would come up to me throughout the duration of the day asking if they were going to get to hear my speak again, that was their hope. I couldn’t believe how much they internalized this message, how incredible is that.

Knowing the issues here in Kenya revolving around sexual activity and hearing the different responses from these young adults, I can’t help but walk away from this situation feeling in my heart that God used me to change lives.

Bwana Asifiwe (Praise God)

Mwendwa

PRAYER REQUESTS:
For safety reasons I am going to be moving into a hotel, It is in a locked compound and has security which is MUCH safer than where I am staying now (and it also has a toilet instead of a hole in the ground!). Tumaini is going to try to negotiate a price for it. Pray that it is affordable and that it all works out.
My safety.
The funds for a generator for Tumaini
The travels of these children from the camp, they come from literally all across Kenya.
More Rain
My travels, I am going to be in Nairobi this next week and I am going on a safari with the group from America.

RANDOMS:
I got electrocuted yesterday… it hurt
Have you ever had hundreds of AIDS orphans swarm you each day and follow you everywhere? I have and must say it is the COOLEST thing ever.
These girls kept on calling me Mathatha (trouble maker) and so I started calling them Binga (booger) and I told everyone that they eat their boogers.
Whenever I get surrounded by kids I make a fart noise and point at one the kids telling everyone they farted. Everyone starts laughing and running away from the newly dubbed fart kid.
I got a new DVD the other day. It has all of the Lion Kings, Mulan, and a TON of Disney movies. I played the Lion King for all of the kids and they LOVED it. The funny thing is that a lot of the names and songs are Swahili.

Word of the day
Matata – MAA – Tah – Tah
Trouble maker

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 10:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.