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Beyond Blood: Hope and Humanity in the Forgotten Fight Against AIDS
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626346611 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Greenleaf Book Group Press |
| Publication date: | 10/22/2019 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Cornel Onyango Nyaywera: Cornel is a pastor, husband, and father. He has served as an East African Director for CARE for AIDS, since he co-founded the organization in 2007. Cornel grew up in the Western part of Kenya near Lake Victoria, where his passion for justice and inclusivity led him to engage in the HIV crisis that was destroying his community. Cornel and his wife now live and serve in Nairobi, Kenya. They have five children: Bryan, Justin, Sherry, Collins, and Cornel, Jr.Duncan Kimani Kamau: Duncan grew up on a coffee farm in Central Kenya. As the son of a pastor, Duncan has always felt a calling to compassion and pastoral care, which eventually led him to service in the face of the AIDS crisis, which he did by activating local churches to care for the most marginalized members of their communities. Duncan serves as a co-founder and East African Director of CARE for AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya. He and his wife Rose live with their three biological children, Keith, Abigail, and Anna, in addition to their seven adopted boys. Justin T. Miller: Justin grew up in Fayetteville, GA and has spent the past decade working with the heart of an entrepreneur to solve one of the world’s most complex social problems. As the co-founder and CEO of CARE for AIDS, he has dedicated his life and leadership to empowering people throughout East Africa to live a life beyond AIDS. Justin’s home base is Atlanta, GA, where he heads the U.S. office of CARE for AIDS. Justin and his wife, Lindsay, have two beautiful children, Addie and Logan.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
CORNEL
I began walking at eight months. Not just walking but running. My mother will tell you that on the very day I took my first steps, I also chased her through the market as she went to go fetch something. She already had my eldest brother, Leonard, by then. He had not walked until he was thirteen months, so she knew to be surprised. Yes, to hear her tell it, nodhii mabor, he was going places.
I grew up in the village of Seka Kagwa, in Kendu Bay. It is just outside the Kenyan port city of Kisumu. My home was no more than a hundred yards from Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world. My tribe is Luo, and we are a tribe of fishermen. For centuries, we have relied on the lake to catch fish like tilapia, Nile perch, and omena to eat and sell. But from a young age, despite netting fish for shillings as early as ten years old, I knew I did not want to grow up to be a fisherman. The problem was that there was not a lot of opportunity to be something more.
My mother and father were not educated. Neither of them even made it through primary school. Because of that, or maybe in spite of it, I was determined to go as far as I could. I eagerly waited for the day I could finally lift my right arm up over my head and touch the bottom of my left ear with my hand. That was the sign that one was old enough to attend school. If you try it on a child of three or four years, they cannot do it. I have met Westerners who are shocked to hear of that measure of growth. But, you see, most children in my village did not know how old they were. We were born at home so we did not have birth certificates. We were born to illiterate mothers so no date of birth was known or written down.
As each of my seven brothers and sisters passed the hand-to-ear test, they too began attending school. I am happy to report that each of us completed primary school, all the way from class 1 to class 8. But we were only able to do so because it was free. There were only a few small charges here and there for uniforms and books. As small as those costs were, it was still a miracle that we were able to pay them at all.
We did not have any money. But we did not know anyone who did, so I never felt too sorry about it as a boy. Lake Victoria was once a rich source of income for the bordering countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. But it became overfished. Too many fishermen were all trying to catch the same thing. And the amount of available fish was always shrinking. In the 1950s, in order to boost that amount, several non-native fish were put into the lake. Nile perch were one of them. But they turned out to be predators who pushed our local fish further toward extinction. Many of those local fish had been algae-eating fish. When they were no longer around, the algae rapidly spread and ended up choking the lake. So did the water hyacinth. It may be nice to look at, with its green glossy leaves and purple flowers. But it is an aggressive weed. It sits on top of the water and restricts the oxygen of everything below it. It is crazy to think how one living thing can ravage an entire population.
The lack of livelihood around me served as proof that fishing was not my future. It encouraged me to become even more diligent about my studies. I ran home every day after school to make sure I had enough time before the sun went down to complete my work. Most days, there were upward of fifty assignments to do. We all knew what the teachers would do if they were not turned in. Or worse, done incorrectly. My mother told me I could wait to do it later by candlelight, as that was when my cousins and siblings usually did it. But the candlelight made me feel limited. Like I would not be able to properly absorb the information. Only once the sunlight was gone and my work was complete would I go outside to join the end of a football game, find food in nearby trash piles before they were set on fire, or walk down to the lake to bathe.
It was during those evening hours at the lake when I saw local fishermen meeting with different women. The light of the moon allowed me to see that the women were not their wives. They went together behind the bushes. When the women came back out, they carried fish. Sometimes more than two or three in each hand. I did not understand what was going on at that young age, of course. But I knew how hungry we all were. I knew that desperation sometimes created reckless behavior.
Those were the nights I tried to bathe as quickly as possible. I did not want to risk the fishermen telling my father that I did not know how to mind my own business. I hurried back home to get ready for bed. When it came time to sleep, I gathered with all of my siblings in the single room we shared. There was space on the floor for one mat made of papyrus leaves. All of us could fit if we lay vertically and promised not to toss or turn. There was one blanket among us. But we rarely needed it. One of the good things about a mud-brick home was that it stayed a pleasant temperature despite the heat of the dry season or the chill of the wet season.
Roosters and egrets always announced the rising sun, although I often woke before their calls. My mother said it was because I was koso kwe and gombo ng'eyo, restless and curious. I escaped the house as quietly as I could to collect branches for firewood or to fill pots with lake water in case we had millet to boil. We did not have cows, only what was given as a dowry to nearby relatives. But I went around before school and offered to milk any cow that I saw. In return, I asked the owners if I could take some of the milk home. Sometimes they let me.
School was several kilometers away. My siblings tended to walk ahead, while I waited in front of Harrison's house each morning. He was my best friend. He and his family lived across from us, just down the hill toward the lake. Out of everyone in our class, only Harrison liked school as much as I did. His only downfall was that he ran late. We would have to hurry to catch up with the rest of the students. We made our way down the long stretch of dirt road to join the sea of green uniform shorts, white collared shirts, bare feet, and books. Most of us did not have backpacks so we held our books. Even if I had a backpack, I would still have held my books in my hands. That was how you treated treasured items. I looked forward to school each day. It felt to me like an escape, although many would tell you it felt more like imprisonment.
But it was often more like hell than heaven because of the brutal spankings. I do not remember going one day without being hit. If you did, then you were among the luckiest. We did not necessarily get hit because we behaved badly. The punishment was more about power than discipline. The teachers seemed to enjoy it and delivered beatings for a great many things. If we did not complete our homework, we got spanked. If we missed a question on a test, we got spanked. Answer by answer, the teacher made us raise our hand if we got it wrong.
We were spanked with tree branches on our buttocks or back. Our uniforms were often faded and torn in those areas. We were also struck on the palm of the hand. Some teachers struck four times. Some struck twenty. It was not uncommon for students to bleed or faint. Some were taken to the hospital. The parents accepted these actions. No one questioned a teacher. They were held in high esteem. There was no way a teacher was wrong. Students were to obey and endure any punishment the teacher gave, period.
There were times we tried to outsmart the teachers by putting books between our buttocks and our shorts so we would not feel it when they hit us. That was soon discovered due to the sound of the stroke against the hardcover of the textbook. We then cut out thin layers of mattress and sewed them into our underwear to provide padding. When that was also discovered, we were made to strip off our shorts and underwear in front of the whole school during the weekly parade. They hit us on our bare behinds in what was as painful as it was humiliating. For many kids, the treatment was too much to bear. Many ran away from school. Some never returned. I always returned. The beatings were the cost of learning.
My favorite subject was English. Our national language was Swahili, of course, although most in our village spoke only Luo. Those of us at school were privileged to learn English as well. I spent hours studying English grammar and was fascinated by the way the words were constructed. I was eager for ways to practice. The school did not have any books for us to read besides government-issued textbooks that we shared in school only, so I would go to indoor markets looking for brochures and magazines. I often read aloud to people passing by.
I believe it was in those articles that I first learned of the science behind HIV/AIDS. For years, there had been talk in our village about a disease that caused many deaths. Most of the people affected seemed to be women. At least, that was what the men said. No one spoke of the disease by name. It seemed there was no need since the physical signs were obvious enough. A woman got very skinny. And then she got kicked out of her home. That meant she had it. There was no need to discuss it further. Doing so might spread the chira, the curse. But as I learned more about the disease, I knew the silence was about much more than the fear of a curse. It was that people could not speak about what they did not understand.
If the articles sparked my interest in AIDS, my curiosity caught fire at school. We took health class during the later years of primary school and received quite a bit of information about it. Since most of the material was in English, I imagined that the Western world was full of only scientists and doctors. I remember thinking how unfair it was that those of us hearing the truth about AIDS were not the people who needed to hear it most. We as youth were not in a position to change minds or abolish shame. I felt trapped because what I learned could not go beyond me. I could not speak of it in the village and did not dare bring it up at home. Where I came from, the secret to survival was knowing your place.
Especially with my father. He was a stern man. He was in charge of what we spoke about and what we believed. He expected to be served and respected. He enforced discipline. He had the final say in family matters. It was all very typical of Luo culture. Men were wuon dala, head of the homestead. I imagine his father was the same way, although I did not know him. My father did not know him either. He died when my father was only three years old. My father was quick to anger. Perhaps it stemmed from that. No father and too much changaa, homebrew.
Although not in a physical sense, my grandfather was still very present in our lives. Many members from my father's side of the family lived on my grandfather's land with us, another thing typical of Luos. I grew up with my aunts, uncles, and cousins all within shouting distance. It was a village within a village. We all had mud and stick homes with grass-thatched roofs. We all had a separate outdoor mud-brick room to use as a kitchen. We all had latrines made from branches of Markhamia lutea, the Nile tulip. We were spaced out just enough to make us feel both independent and connected with each other.
One of my first cousins and his wife lived a five-minute walk away. They were the farthest out from the rest of us. Their placement afforded them more privacy. But we were still aware of their comings and goings. We noticed right away when my cousin started leaving his wife for weeks at a time.
A cultural practice of our tribe is wife inheritance. That means when a male relative dies and leaves behind a wife, a member of his family must inherit her. The ancient custom was meant to ensure that the widow had someone to support her and her children financially and to carry on the family lineage. It was also a way to keep her late husband's wealth within the family bloodline. The new husband therefore provides for her but does not need to move her into his home. He goes back and forth from one home and wife to another. That was why my cousin was gone for long stretches. It turned out that a distant relative in a nearby village had passed on. My cousin was with his inherited wife and her children.
I knew that polygamy and wife inheritance had long been part of our culture. But that was the first time someone in my family had practiced it in front of my eyes. I figured the adults would be pleased that my cousin upheld such a time-honored tradition. Instead, it was met with grave concern. I overheard them discussing how the distant relative died suspiciously. He was odhero ahinya, rail thin, and had the look. They said his widow had also lost a great deal of weight in recent months. They spoke about the need to cleanse our land. And then I heard my grandmother say that the inherited wife was rumored to be a Kikuyu. That caused the biggest gasps. Out of the forty-plus tribes in Kenya, Luo and Kikuyu had the most rivalry. Still, I was surprised to hear that her being Kikuyu could have been more tragic than having a deadly disease.
My father's eldest brother put a stop to everything. He decided that my cousin just needed to keep up his part of the land. Beyond that, they were not to concern themselves with rumors. And that was that. Life continued.
As the fishing trade got worse, more and more people were out of work. My father was one of them, although I do not really remember a time when he was regularly trying to catch fish in the first place. He did not go down to the lake each day with the other fishermen. He did not spend the hour before sunset bleeding the fish and removing their guts. He rarely brought home money. I knew that because I heard my parents discussing it. My mother would ask if she could have a couple shillings to get flour or beans at the market, and my father would hit her and tell her, "Ionge erokamano," "You are ungrateful."
In our culture, the role of the woman was tiyo gi luor, to serve and obey. They stayed quiet. They raised the children, cooked for the family, cleaned the home, and grew basic staple crops. But as my father continued to not work, my mother took on more responsibility. She wove baskets out of papyrus reeds with my sisters and took them to the Oriang market, in Kendu Bay, every Thursday. She taught herself how to make jewelry and then washed merchants' clothes in exchange for beads and hardware. She went down to the lakeshore and tried to catch sardines with a net or with a pole and hook if someone lent her one. Since she did not have access to a boat and could not swim, she was limited to walking out waist-deep and hoping the fish were not scared off by the movement of her legs. What little money she made went toward school uniforms and food. It was understandable that when it came time to pay for our secondary school, there was nothing left.
Once a Kenyan student completes class 8, they must pass a national examination in order to attend secondary school. It is highly stressful for the pupils. Some start studying months in advance. Some stay late at school to review textbooks. Some lie awake for hours at night going over multiplication tables in their head. Those of us who took great pride in academia did all of those things. I did not just want to pass. I wanted to pass with the best possible score so I could gain admission to the best possible secondary school.
Secondary lasts four years, similar to an American high school. There are three types of government-funded secondary schools one could go to based on the outcome of their exams: national, provincial, or district. Students with the highest scores got into national schools. That is what everyone strove for. They were better schools that provided a better chance of getting into university. They were even rumored to have things like laboratory equipment, musical instruments, and sports gear. The problem was that they were the most expensive out of the three types of schools. The student not only paid for a better academic experience. They also paid to live on campus. These were not day schools but boarding schools. So even though the government paid for a large part of it, there were high boarding costs that the family was responsible to cover. Upward of 32,000 shillings, or around US$320, per year.
There was a four-year age gap between my brother Leonard and me. He trailed behind in primary school. I sped ahead, so we finished class 8 and took the examination at the same time. I was very anxious during the long month of waiting for results. Leonard did not seem affected. Even on the day we received notice that the results were in, he chose not to walk to the school to find out. "Nyisa duoko na kiduogo," "Just tell me my results when you get back," he said.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Beyond Blood"
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Copyright © 2019 CARE for AIDS, Inc..
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