TwoHelp Kenya

Malindi part 2: Fighting Fear

January 28, 2006 on 2:26 am |

Tucked away behind the tourism and bustle of the main street in Malindi is a district of deeply rutted unpaved roads, slum housing, and little economic hope. For each of the Germans and Italians prawling along the beaches and the streets of the old town, there are thousands of Kenyans living in abject poverty, just out of the line of sight.

In one of these slum districts, a daily market convenes, with women selling lettuce, cassava, okra, coconuts, mangoes, potatoes, and several other fruits and vegetables. Upon our arrival to this market, there is a little bit of suspiscion and a lot of staring. There is one easy way to immediately discover how many tourists visit an area in Kenya.

Although it sounds crass, all you have to do it to pull out a camera and try to take a picture with people in it. In areas that tourists visit, the people in the photo will demand money for having their picture taken. They will cover their face, command their children to move out of the line of sight of the camera, and make make you, the cameraperson, feel very uncomfortable.

I’ve been on the other side of these cameras before. Travelling in China during the summer of 1991, shortly before the onslaught of Sino-American business deals, there were many areas that I visited where Chinese people had never seen a white person. I posed for photographs with many familys and was frequently photographed just standing alone or with the others whom I travelled with.

Yet, if my livelihood consisted of selling eggs for $0.05 each, I, too, would feel like I deserved something for allowing others to photograph me. Tourism can be uncomfortable.

Foreigners had been to this particular market in Malindi. Most likely, they had been foreign guests of the Kenya Red Cross (KRCS) Malindi branch. Since the area was such a tourist hotspot, members of the German and Italian Red Crosses frequently knocked out two birds with one stone by making an official visit to the Malindi branch HQ while vacationing on the coast of Kenya.

About seven volunteers from the local Peer Education team were at the market to perform a puppet show. Their puppets’ heads were the size of a human head, they had long necks, and the hands belonged to the puppet masters, who had inserted them through the cuffs of the puppets’ shirts. Before the show, to gather an audience, the Peer Educators played games of Simon Says (and other similar games) with the children. They also danced to hip hop music. Watching the young boys dance to the music was quite amazing. These kids, 7 to 14 years old, were some of the best dancers that I had ever seen. Where they learned their moves, I don’t know.

By the time the puppet show started, there were about 200 people standing to watch. The puppets are used to discuss some difficult issues because they hold the attention of the kids while taking the edge off of people discussing and acting out difficult problems like incest and HIV transmission.

The Peer Educators in Malindi are nothing short of amazing. Through the difficulties of volunteering in a country with rampant unemployment, the volunteers of the KRCS, in every location that we have visited, drop complaints in lieu of positive energy meant to improve the lives of the beneficiaries of their programs. As I watched the puppet show, I reflected on the attitudes of the people, the struggle to change misinformed and dangerous behavior, and the vast differences between the energy and creativity of the volunteers in Kenya and those with whom I have worked in the United States.

Volunteering is too frequently undertaken as a personal attempt to find satisfaction in helping others. It makes a story that can be told to others, about one’s virtue and willingness to help those in need.

Kenyan volunteering, at least with the Red Cross, is about giving in every way possible. Time, compassion, money, energy – all given selflessly. For many of the volunteers with the KRCS, there is nobody to whom to brag about helping – only more people needing help. It is an endless struggle to take small bites out of an enormous apple, at the core of which is the improvement of society through education, prevention, treatment, and care.

Mirroring the efforts of the Peer Educators is the staff of the medium-security prison in Malindi. During a visit to the prison, we learned that the warden has implemented a KRCS program to educate all of the prison staff and some of the prisoners about HIV. The goal is to sensitize the prison community to the dangers of the disease while reducing stigma amongst the population. The warden wants the prisoners under his watch to reintegrate into society with a larger understanding of the social context of the disease and the knowledge necessary to prevent transmission of the disease. It is a grassroots initiative and a unique program for both the prison and the KRCS – the outcome of which I hope is a successful working partnership and the impact of which I hope is the reintegration into society of former prisoners with better knowledge of how to improve their lives and the lives of those around them.

Through Peer Education, Home-Based Care, Disaster Services, Blood Donor Recruiting, and other programs, the creative and energetic staff and volunteers at the Malindi branch of the KRCS are nothing short of a fantastic example of how to affect a community, deliver a message, decrease stigma, and fight the good fight against the fear that surrounds HIV and AIDS in Kenya.