Archive for June 24th, 2008
Insecurity & Education Hold Kenyan IDPs in Camps
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN  |
| Samuel Karanja at Naivasha stadium camp for internally displaced Kenyans |
NAIVASHA, 24 June 2008 (IRIN) – Samuel Karanja was a resident of Narok North district in Kenya’s Rift Valley Province until he was displaced in the post-election violence this year.
Karanja, a former shop-owner, has spent the past six months in two internally displaced persons (IDP) camps; first in the town of Gilgil, later in neighbouring Naivasha. Gilgil and Naivasha are both in Rift Valley Province.
“We were camping on private property [in Gilgil] so we were forced to leave,” he said. “Those who had shambas [small farms] went back while the rest of us business people who owned no land had to leave.”
He said he was not willing to leave the camp, despite the resettlement of most IDPs, as he had nowhere else to go.
“I would not want to return … people died before my eyes. I would rather stay here but live in peace,” he said.
Karanja’s situation is common among hundreds of IDPs who remain reluctant to return to their former homes. Most want help to restart their lives elsewhere.
The IDP spokesman at the Naivasha Stadium camp, John Mathias, told IRIN: “There is still a lot of hostility lingering in the places we came from.” IDPs were concerned about security in the areas of return.
With some camps scheduled to close down in the coming weeks, Mathias said the IDPs had not refused to leave, rather “it is the treatment the IDPs [who left] received upon their return that has made us not eager to join them”.
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN  |
| Internally displaced Kenyans listening to officials during a meeting at Naivasha camp |
At least 4,411 IDPs remained in two camps in Naivasha out of 11,000 at the peak of the post-election crisis.
Resettlement programmes
“Nobody is going to be forced to resettle unless it is verified [in consultation with the local communities] that the situation is peaceful,” the assistant minister for special programmes, Mohamud Ali Mohamed said.
Mohamed said the government would facilitate the resettlement in addition to providing food and transport.
An estimated 201,022 IDPs had been resettled with 40,411 still in camps, according to the director of resettlements, Wilfred Ndolo. The Molo area had recorded the highest returns – 43,277 out of an initial 55,000.
The government was also providing 10,000 shillings (US$166) in start-up funds. So far, 2,500 households in Kipkelion, in Rift Valley Province, had benefited.
The government set aside 700 million shillings ($11.6 million) for 70,000 households.
“We have only been paying those who have gone back to their farms,” Ndolo said. The government would also provide the IDPs with food aid for the next six months until the harvest season, he said.
Rebuilding efforts
The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) has started rebuilding houses for returnees in parts of the north Rift at $1,000 per two-bedroom house, according to the secretary-general, Abbas Gullet.
So far, 10 houses have been reconstructed by the KRCS in the Matharu area of the Rift Valley with plans for another 1,000.
“The houses were built from scratch by the two communities [the Kikuyu and Kalenjin], promoting good relations between the two,” Anthony Mwangi, the KRCS public relations manager, said.
 Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN |
| Monica Mumbi talking about the plight of IDPs at Naivasha |
In answer to complaints about lack of medical facilities, Mwangi said each IDP camp had a mobile clinic; those that did not provided clear instructions on where IDPs could seek treatment. Psycho-social counselling services were also available, he said.
Education a factor
According to an update by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), uncertainties over access to education in areas of return had contributed to IDPs’ reluctance to leave the camps.
In Eldoret, children were being left behind in schools by parents who felt their education would suffer if they moved on. Similarly, parents in the Nakuru showground camp were reluctant to move because they did not want their children to leave the schools they were attending, OCHA stated.
The lack of teachers was also a problem.
Meanwhile, KRCS, World Food Programme and other partners continued to provide food aid to 180,000 IDPs in camps and areas of return in parts of Kenya affected by the violence.
KRCS was also providing farming tools and seeds to returnees.
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 Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN |
| Boys waiting to be circumcised at Migosi health centre, Nyanza |
KISUMU, 24 June 2008 (PlusNews) – The reproductive health NGO, Marie Stopes Kenya (MSK), has started a mobile circumcision pilot project in the western, largely non-circumcising province of Nyanza.
 Audio Slideshow |
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IRIN/PlusNews recently visited one MSK mobile clinic in a suburb of Kisumu, the capital of Nyanza, where a large number of men and boys turned up for the procedure.
Kenya is preparing to roll out a national campaign to promote male circumcision as a tool in the prevention of HIV/AIDS, following studies in 2006 that showed the procedure to reduce a man’s risk of contracting HIV by as much as 60 percent.
Links:
At the Cutting edge – male circumcision and HIV
Kenya: Government to roll out male circumcision
Mind Your Language – A Short Guide to African HIV/AIDS Slang
 Photo: Anthony Kaminju/IRIN |
| Word play |
JOHANNESBURG, 18 June 2008 (PlusNews) – HIV has hit our lives, our families, our economies; it also shapes the way we talk. IRIN/PlusNews looks at how the virus and its impact translates into everyday speech from the streets of Lagos to the townships of Johannesburg, and finds that despite the billions of dollars spent on positive communication strategies, the word on the street remains decidedly negative.
In Zimbabwe’s Shona language, spoken by about 80 percent of the population, slang is called chibhende. According to Dr Robert Muponde, a senior lecturer in English studies at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand, the expression speaks volumes about how HIV is understood and accommodated.
“Chibhende means speaking obliquely of something, in order not to blow its cover, or in order to speak about it more comfortably,” he told IRIN/PlusNews.
In Zimbabwe, HIV is often spoken about as a thief (matsotsi). If you are HIV-positive, people might say you’ve been mugged, or Akarohwa nematsotsi in Shona, Muponde said. The phrase gives an idea of how the virus is perceived – as a sneak attack – but it also creates a space for discussion that otherwise might not exist.
“Sex is difficult to handle in a shy language like Shona,” Muponde said. “Slang gives the unspeakable street value by making it look accessible and banal.”
Felicity Horne, who studies AIDS and language at the University of South Africa, agreed, saying that while many communities struggled to break the silence about HIV and AIDS formally, informal or slang terms for the epidemic were proliferating and were beginning to construct a response to the pandemic.
“Language can neither be separated from our thoughts and feelings, nor from the social context in which it is used,” she said. “Words and images create different conceptual realities of the phenomenon.”
Organisations like SAfAIDS, a southern African HIV/AIDS information dissemination service based in Zimbabwe, argue that the slang used to describe the virus – which is almost uniformly negative – reinforces the stigma and fatalism that has proved so difficult to erase over the past 25 years of advocacy.
IRIN/PlusNews has compiled a short list of the ways people refer to HIV/AIDS on the continent.
Angola (Portuguese)
Pisar pisar na min – Contracting HIV is like having “stepped on a landmine”
Bichinho – “Little bug” (the virus)
Kenya (Kikuyu, spoken mainly in central Kenya)
kagunyo – “The worm” (euphemism for HIV)
Nigeria (Hausa, spoken mainly in the north)
Kabari Salama aalaiku – Literally translates as “Excuse me, grave” (reference to AIDS)
Tewo Zamani – Translates as the “sickness of this generation” (another reference to AIDS)
Nigeria (Igbo, spoken mainly in the east)
Ato nai ise – “Five and three” (5 + 3 = 8, and “eight” sounds like “AIDS”)
Oria Obiri na aja ocha – “Sickness that ends in death” (euphemism for AIDS)
Nigeria (Yoruba, spoken mainly in the west)
Eedi – “Curse”
Arun ti ogbogun – “Sickness without cure”
Nigeria (Pidgin, the unofficial lingua franca)
He don carry – “He carries the virus”
Nigeria (English)
HIV – He Intends Victory (acronym of HIV and a phrase popular among born-again Christians)
South Africa (IsiXhosa and IsiZulu)
Udlala ilotto – “Playing the lotto” /ubambe ilotto – “won the lotto” (said of someone suspected of being HIV positive; Lotto is the national lottery)
Unyathele icable – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
South Africa (English)
House in Vereeniging – (Acronym of HIV; “bought a house in Vereeniging”, a town about 50km south of Johannesburg, refers to someone suspected of being HIV positive)
Driving a “Z3″/ “having three kids”/ the “three letters” – All refer to the three letters in the HIV acronym
Tracker – If you are suspected of being HIV positive people say God is tracking you, like the popular southern African service that tracks and recovers stolen vehicles
Tanzania (KiSwahili)
amesimamia msumari – “Standing on a nail”; euphemism for being skinny, or being small enough to fit on a nail’s head, referring to AIDS-related weight loss
kukanyaga miwaya – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
mdudu – “The bug” (refers to HIV)
Uganda (English)
Slim – Euphemism for HIV/AIDS as a result of the associated weight loss; less popular since the advent of ARVs
Uganda (Luganda, spoken mainly in the central region)
Okugwa mubatemu – You have been waylaid by thugs (contracted HIV)
Zambia (Nyanja, spoken mainly in the east and the capital, Lusaka)
Kanayaka – “It has lit up” (refers to a positive reaction from an HIV test)
Ka-onde-onde – “Thing that makes you thinner and thinner” (HIV)
Zambia (Bemba, spoken mainly in the north and Lusaka)
Bamalwele ya akashishi – “Those that suffer from the germ” (HIV-positive people)
Kaleza – “Razor blade” (Refers to a person being thin as a result of AIDS-related weight loss)
Zimbabwe (Shona)
Ari pachirongwa – “He/she is on a (treatment) programme”
Akarohwa nematsoti – “He/she has been beaten by thieves”
Mukondas – Abbreviation of “mukondombera” (epidemic)
Ari kumwa mangai – “He/she is drinking mangai” (mangai is boiled corn seedlings, which represent antiretroviral (ARV) drugs)
Akabatwa – “He/she was caught” (received a positive diagnosis)
Zvirwere zvemazuvano – “The current diseases” (the HIV epidemic)
Akatsika banana – “He/she has stepped on a banana and slipped” (someone who has tested positive and therefore will “fall” or die as a result)
Shuramatongo – “A bad omen for relatives”
Zimbabwe (English)
Red card – Like a football player being sent off, life is over
Go slow – Taken to mean that he/she is now progressing slowly towards death
TB2 – Refers to high rates of HIV and TB co-infection (used to denote AIDS)
RVR – Slang for ARVs, adapted from Mitsubishi’s RVR sports utility vehicle
John the Baptist – When someone has TB, he/she is said to have been baptised by “John the Baptist”, who has come to announce the coming of HIV
FTT – “Failure to thrive” (adapted from the medical phrase, now used to describe HIV-positive children)
Boarding pass – Implies that HIV is a boarding pass to death
Departure lounge – An HIV-infected person is in the departure lounge awaiting death
PlusNews is interested to hear from you if you can improve this glossary. Please send your examples, with a brief description of meaning and where the slang is used, to: mail@plusnews.org
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