Kenya: Anti-AIDS campaigners complain that their efforts to prevent the disease are frustrated by traditional beliefs:
Leaders attending an Aids conference in Kisumu said self-proclaimed cultural experts were using a Kenya Broadcasting Corporation radio programme -- Abila -- to frustrate the fight against the disease by linking it to witchcraft...
...Talks on the Luo culture by some elders are retrogressive. They make people believe that Aids doesn't exist and instead link all illnesses to chira (curse),Ms Oketch said.
Rather then using it as a hook to get people talking about AIDS, the campaigners wish the community would be a little less sex-obsessed:
Moi University Chancellor Bethwel Ogot urged the community to stop some customs which tied sexuality to all important family events such as planting, weeding and harvesting. Such cultures misled people to believing nothing important could be done in a family without sexual intercourse.
The conference blamed Luo musicians for contributing to the spread of Aids, saying a majority of Benga and Ohangla singers composed songs with strong sexual messages that lured their fans to risky sexual behaviour.
Our musicians sing nothing but sex. Women dancers are barely dressed while on stage and this is a setback to the fight,said Ms Oketch .
She did not explain how HIV passes from exposed flesh on stage to the audience. Cultural traits blamed for Aids spread - Daily Nation, 1st December 2003.
![[LJ syndication icon]](http://www.prattle.net/graphics/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
Leave a comment
Evangelism, witnessing and similar activitites go by one name here—, and is no different from spam for viagra, penis enlargement products and pornography. We do not take advertising. If you want to advertise your imaginary friend, please spend your own money on your own web space to do so. Any attempts to use the comments section for advertisements will be deleted, and the perpetrator barred, unless they are particularly stupid, in which case I reserve the right to pinch an idea from Teresa Nielsen Hayden and delete all the vowels.
Allowed HTML:
a href, b, br, p, strong, em, ol, ul, li, blockquote, q, pre. If your name has accents in it, things will (hopefully!) work better if you use the XHTML entities for those letters. The same applies if you are using a word processor to compose your comment, then copying and pasting the text—either turn off curly quotes and avoid using em-dashes, or edit your comment after pasting to get rid of them. Garbled comments usually get deleted.