Recently, I decided to dash into one of my favorite joints to shelter from the rain, and since I had nothing to preoccupy my mind, I kept eavesdropping.
A group of two ladies and a gentleman in the next table were talking about a strange STI, ‘Jakadala’ which had reportedly invaded Migori County.
My mind flashed backed to the 1990s when HIV/AIDS was a new phenomenon in the villages and other small towns save for Nairobi and Mombasa.
Teachers, preachers, administrators and parents admonished youths to control their sexual passions until they were married.
They went around the village talking about how Ukimwi reduced its victims to skeletons covered with wounds and could kill within 6 months.
Scaremongering was often used as a control measure. A rumour about a strange woman or man dressed in expensive suits emerged. It was alleged that they could move around in a red Mercedes Benz.
It was reported that the strangers went around luring school girls and boys to local lodgings, after which they could leave them with bundles of cash.
The crispy notes were said to be meant for their coffins and burial expenses!
As a result girls in the villages avoided boys or men who offered cash; however those who were bolder ensured they used protective measures while engaging in sex.
Teachers and local chiefs kept away from barmaids in the nearby pubs and started luring ‘innocent’ school girls or college girls with handsome cash offers.
Widows, those who had relocated from towns after their husbands died under strange circumstances; which villagers attributed to witchcraft, found refuge in the arms of local pastors and sub-chiefs .
It was not long before this group of villagers who engaged ‘safe sexual partners’ succumbed to what was perceived as witchcraft.
Those of us who could deduce the symptoms knew it was HIV/AIDS spreading faster than California bush-fires.
It was worse in the villages than the dreaded Koinange Street, of Nairobi.
It doesn’t require rocket science to explain why many married men and young ladies succumbed to the epidemic before the discovery of ARVs.
Despite the ARV relief, it is disturbing that the pastors, teachers and chiefs who could set our moral standards became the first victims.
They ignored the very instructions they gave us because they assumed that their ‘safe’ sexual partners in the villages were safer than the ‘strange’ woman in a Red Mercedes.
The ‘strange’ woman could have kept them alive; since no one dared to have sex with her minus protection. It was a case of preaching water while one sipped their wine under the cover of darkness.