MCC funds AIDS prevention among Kenya's Maasai

September 2, 2005

Rebecca Matura first heard about AIDS four years ago, when her neighbors told her about a deadly and incurable disease that had arrived in Kenya's Great Rift Valley.

Matura learned more at a presentation at her Presbyterian church, where a health educator described the ways AIDS can be transmitted — through sex, birth and infected sharp objects.

As a midwife, Matura knew she was at risk. She took an HIV test, which came back negative, and started taking steps to protect herself.

"Now we use gloves so that my blood and the blood of the mother I'm attending do not come in contact," she says.

Matura and her community belong to the Maasai ethnic group, whose traditional way of life involves herding cattle on the grasslands of the Great Rift Valley. MCC is funding a project to educate the Maasai of this region about HIV/AIDS through an outreach of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, which has 25 congregations in the area.

MCC has funded the training of 100 health educators in the region. The Presbyterian churches often send teams of evangelists throughout the area, and health educators go along to share information about HIV/AIDS. The health educators also speak at schools, churches and community meetings.

"It's a healing ministry, and it's a ministry when people are given light as we tell people about the Kingdom of God," says Rev. Stephen Mparinkoi, a Maasai evangelist who serves as head pastor of all the area's Presbyterian congregations.

Jayne Suckfull, the manager of a Kenyan organization that administers HIV tests, says that the churches have convinced a lot of Maasai people to be tested.

"The Maasai community are communal people," Suckfull says. "Throughout Maasai land, the pastor's work has opened up the community to hear about HIV."

However, the rural region in which the Maasai live has no hospitals and few clinics, and a Maasai tradition of polygamy may contribute to the spread of HIV, according to Mparinkoi.

Suckfull says about 5 percent of Maasai adults are infected, and the main challenge is for the community to acknowledge the need for precautions against HIV. Some men and women are now coming to be tested for HIV before getting married, she says. Mparinkoi says that teaching publicly about AIDS prevention is a natural part of the church's role as a trusted member of the community.

"Jesus said, 'If I tell you things of this world, and you do not believe, how will you believe the heavenly things I tell you?'" Mparinkoi says.

 

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