Kenya Diaries: What the AIDS Crisis Leaves Behind

by Barry Simmons, Spring 2006 IRP Fellow
Reprinted with permission of WTVF

Everywhere you turn, it stares you in the face. AIDS has made death a growth industry in Kisumu, Kenya with an unbelievable demand for carpenters.

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In fact, there are several businesses that revolve around death. But while AIDS is a problem, water is a problem too.

Jena Lee from Nashville runs the non-profit mission �Blood: Water Mission.� The mission was set up by the rock band, Jars of Clay.

Blood: Water had installed a well in a village called Nyamonge a year before, and Jena was returning to see how life had changed. The look of life was evident on their faces, and the clean water is saving lives.

But in the midst of celebration and new life, fresh dirt is a reminder of the graves, and many of the deaths are the result of AIDS.

Eunice Odhiobo lost her husband to the disease.

�I'm worried, because I know I'm infected, and I will also die," she said.

It seemed the children at least were unaffected, until it became evident 90 percent of them are orphans.

People are dying every day, burials are happening every weekend. And that means a child is losing a parent. And it's just - it's just not the way that the world's supposed to be," said Jena Lee.

In Africa, 500 Kenyans die of AIDS everyday. So far, the disease has left behind an estimated 650,000 orphans.

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