Women's group battles HIV/AIDS
Group member Helen Mweni in front of her vegetable business.
Photo: CWS / East Africa
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Mlolongo town, located on the southern outskirts of Nairobi, acts as a commercial gatekeeper to the city. All truck freight from Mombasa on highway A104 must pass through as well as the majority of the truck freight entering from Tanzania, making Mlolongo the logical spot to construct a weigh-bridge for the trucks entering Nairobi.
As Mlolongo became established as a truck freight stopover, the town boomed with related industries serving the truck drivers: restaurants, truck stops, petrol stations, hotels, and inevitably prostitution. Long distance truck drivers in East Africa can be on the road away from home for months at a time which leads many drivers to seek out the company of commercial sex workers.
The coupling of prostitution and commercial transport hubs is not a new phenomenon; the two have been bed-fellows for as long as prostitution and trade have been around. What is relatively new is the HIV/AIDS virus. The risky sexual behavior of the drivers combined with their high level of mobility provides the ideal environment for the spread of the disease. Studies and testing have shown that truck drivers in East Africa have a HIV prevalence rate around 25% or higher, more than four times that of the general population.
As the virus has torn through the community of Mlolongo, many people have succumbed to the despair and fatalism that surround the HIV/AIDS crisis, but not one group of women who call themselves the 'Eagles Initiative." The Eagles Initiative, sponsored by CWSEA partner OAIC (Organization of African Instituted Churches), is a women's savings and credit organization with forty members, half of whom are single mothers.
The Eagles Initiative is one of the many Improved Livelihoods programs that CWS funds in an attempt to empower women both economically and socially in East Africa. The group provides small business training and loans ranging from 5,000-10,000 Kenyan Shillings (Approx. 75-150 USD) to develop small businesses and raise standards or living.
The Eagles Initiative, like so many other CWSEA Improved Livelihoods women's groups, chooses to actively extend to their communities the empowerment they themselves have received. The Eagles, some of whom are themselves former sex-workers, have begun trying to lure the young women away from prostitution at the truck stops by providing them with the incentive of training and resources needed to create their own businesses.
"We incorporated a HIV ministry because we want these young women to live a quality lifestyle," said one member, "The problems that come with HIV are very high." Another of the problems caused by HIV that the Eagles must face is the ever increasing numbers of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Mlolongo. In Kenya alone, there are currently more than two million children orphaned by the AIDS virus. The group has begun looking towards addressing this problem by supporting OVCs and avoiding future cases by expanding their HIV/AIDS education.
 Women of the Mlolongo Eagles Initiative Photo: CWS / East Africa
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Mlolongo is rocky ground for hope to grow in. Its problems are serious and well entrenched but the women of the Eagles Initiative are determined to be the agents of change in their own lives and communities.
Winifred, the group leader, says, "We as women wanted our own group so we could contribute to the community and improve our lives. We cannot accomplish this unless we ourselves are first empowered."
So even in the face of the problems in Mlolongo, CWSEA, OAIC, and the women of the Eagles Initiative will continue planting hope in hard ground, empowering one woman at a time, and reaching out in partnership to those who long for change.
Read more: CWS Observes World AIDS Day