Above the low, monotonous hum of the fan from a bakery in Mwandoni, a low-income residential area in the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa, the clear, youthful voice of a soloist cuts through the dusty neighborhood and instantly transforms the scene into a jamboree of song and dance.
Dancing in pairs, a dozen young men and women respond in chorus. Their feet raise the dust as the dancers form a ring around the soloist and two drummers. Dressed in sisal costumes over bright yellow T-shirts, the dancers gyrate their hips, shake their shoulders and move on in step to the rhythm of the drums.
It is a vigorous dance, traditionally sung in thanksgiving for a good harvest. But today the youthful dancers are celebrating something else: a life has been saved.
"The words in the song have been changed," said Susan Abiero, one of the dancers. "It tells of a young man who has contracted HIV and is about to commit suicide. The priest prevails upon him to change his mind, and we're rejoicing."
In the original setting, a merry audience would have joined the dance. Today some 300 people gathered in the village square listen attentively to the song's message.
This open ground under the trees was once the exclusive domain of the Kambi, or village council elders, who met here to discuss clan issues and arbitrate disputes. Now the young people have taken over the space, and they're spreading a different message -- how to avoid contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The bold writing on the dancers' T-shirts emphasizes their message: "SIKILIZA, JIFUNZE ILIUISHI" ("Listen, Learn and Live"). As the dance continues, young people move through the captivated crowd, handing out leaflets with information about HIV/AIDS.
A Beginning
The performance in Mwandoni is typical of the outreach efforts supported by Artnet Waves Communications' National Youth AIDS Theater Outreach Program throughout Kenya. Dances and theatrical pieces set the pace for a series of activities that stimulate discussion of HIV/AIDS.
Abiero's group, the Mwandoni Theater Youth Group, was formed in 1998. It is one of 250 such groups using community theater to promote a better understanding of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and encourage behavior change to reduce risk of HIV infection.
A group of young thespians based at Nairobi's National Theater founded Artnet Waves in 1994. According to Kamau Gathesha, the group's communication director, the initial idea was to hold an annual youth theater festival with an HIV/AIDS theme to coincide with World AIDS Day, which is observed every December 1.
Two annual festivals were supported by small grants from the Rapid Response Fund of Family Health International's AIDS Control and Prevention (AIDSCAP) Project in Kenya. About 8,000 young people turned out to watch 43 groups compete for trophies in the first two-day festival in 1995.
The event received wide coverage in the daily newspapers and broadcast media. Kenya's vice president, Professor George Saitoti, was the chief guest on the final day, raising the festival's profile.
Following the publicity given to the first festival, the second one -- also held in Nairobi a year later -- attracted even more participants and spectators. Sixty groups competed, and about 10,000 people attended the festival.
"This is when we realized that we needed to develop some activities, particularly to improve the quality of performances,'' Gathesha said. "We also needed to reach out to the youth wherever they are on a regular basis rather than the one-time World AIDS Day activity."
A Broader Mandate
Although the World AIDS Day drama festival still continues, Artnet's focus has changed to organizing performances by and for youth in communities year-round.
"Whereas the initial Rapid Response Fund project encouraged the groups participating in the drama festival to give performances in their communities throughout the year, this new program provides a mechanism for making that happen," said FHI-Kenya Technical Officer Peter Mwarogo.
Now Artnet's National Youth AIDS Theater Outreach Program covers Rift Valley, Nyanza, Western, Nairobi, Mt. Kenya and Coast provinces. These six regions are home to 72 percent of Kenya's total population.
FHI's Implementing AIDS Prevention and Care (IMPACT) Project supports Artnet's activities in Mombasa in the Coast Province, Nakuru in the Rift Valley and Nzoia, Webuye and Busia in Western Kenya. The British Council and ActionAid-Kenya sponsor Artnet in the other regions.
In each of the six regions, coordinators employed by Artnet train youth theater group leaders in organizing outreach events, attend rehearsals and ensure that each group gives at least four performances a month. They also assist group leaders in maintaining the accuracy of the HIV/AIDS messages and the quality of the productions.
The rest is up to the group members. A group typically begins by identifying a problem related to HIV/AIDS affecting the youth in a community. The artists then prepare a performance, using poems, oral narratives, song and dance, or drama to address that problem.
Once the act has been perfected, members of the theater groups organize an outreach event in a community and invite young people. "The entire outreach process is carried out on young people's own terms," Mwarogo said. "This allows them to interpret the meaning of HIV/AIDS for themselves and, through dramatic arts, to explore associated values, conflicts and solutions pertinent to their own generation."
Audiences are invited to participate in this process. After each performance, a facilitator stimulates debate on the issues raised or invites comments from the audience. Very often audience members themselves come up with solutions. For example, after a parent at an outreach event identified lack of parent-child communication about sex as a problem, a group of parents resolved to discuss sexual matters with their children.
Telling Stories
At a recent Artnet outreach event in Kibera, a slum area on the outskirts of Nairobi, the actors used the metaphor of writing in a book to convey a message about safer sex. A pen should be used to write in one book, the story says. However, for those who wish to make copies of what they write (or to have sex with more than one partner), a carbon paper (condom) should be used.
Many of the groups have adapted traditional folklore to convey HIV/AIDS messages. The powerful African storytelling style, characterized by metaphor, symbolism and imagery, is retained in many of the performances.
Take the story of the taxi driver who drives many different makes of cars. "One day he drive this big BMW (Be My Wife), with a big bum and lovely curves,'' says the storyteller, sending the audience into gales of laughter. "The next day, he squeezes into a tiny Japanese model.
"He was the envy of the taxi drivers in his neighborhood," the narrator continues. "All this time he never used to buckle up. One day, he had this terrible accident, which left him with scars all over his face and a broken leg, putting to an end his exploits with different models of cars. His experience made him become an advocate of safety-belt use."
At this point, a facilitator turns to the audience, seeking interpretations of the story. A member of the audience identifies the parallel with safe sex, and this leads to a lively discussion on condom use.
Audiences clearly enjoy such exchanges. "It's about the youth and by the youth; it has to be fun," said Chrispine Mwakideo, a member of St. Luke's theater group in Mombasa.
Theater for Development
Artnet Waves helps the groups learn how to make performances entertaining and educational. At the beginning of each year, the regional coordinators organize training workshops where the 100 to 150 youth drama group leaders in each region learn the theatrical skills they will need to produce effective performances. Participants also receive packets of information about HIV/AIDS, community mobilization and drama production. Then, when they return home, the group leaders train the members of their groups.
The materials and the training emphasize "Theater for Development," an approach that encourages audiences to identify a common problem and participate in choosing solutions. In Theater for Development, members of the audience may be invited to join the players on stage. Audience input is often requested during performances, and sometimes the audience can choose an outcome.
One youth group developed a drama skit to discourage discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS based on how they contracted the virus. The skit tells the story of a sex worker who reveals that she is HIV-positive and a young man who is also infected with HIV. He wants to wreak revenge by infecting as many people as possible. Both are ill and need admission to the local hospital, where only one bed is available. The audience is asked which of the two should be given preference.
"Through the moderated discussion that follows, participants discover their own stereotypes and attitudes," said Charles, a member of the group that created the skit. "The PWAs (people living with AIDS) require care and compassion regardless of their background."
Maryrose Ikumi, Artnet's coordinator for Mombasa, believes that using theater to convey social messages enables the groups to discuss what would otherwise be taboo subjects. "Since one is acting, one has the freedom that others in real life cannot be accorded," she said.
Commitment and Confidence
When they are working on a new performance, members of a theater group rehearse with the Artnet coordinator until they feel the act is perfected. All the artists and discussion facilitators are volunteers, and many of them devote as many as 20 hours a week to the project.
"It's a matter of commitment and dedication," Mwakideo explained. "At times, we have to pay our own fare to the venues where we are invited to perform."
Mwakideo says he enjoys acting, a love that developed during his days at Khamis Secondary School in Mombasa. But his present work with the St. Luke's group was compelled by a personal tragedy.
"I have lost two sisters to AIDS," said Mwakideo painfully. "Since then, I committed my life to informing my community, especially the youth, about HIV/AIDS."
Ali Kaniki, a 25-year-old thespian, founded his own group, House of Dreams, in 1995. The group today has 20 active members, most ages 17 to 24.
"It fills my heart to see a big crowd waiting to enjoy our performance," said Kaniki. "We don't just attract young people but even mama bui bui (veiled Muslim women)."
For some, the glory of winning a trophy at one of Artnet's annual regional drama festivals and a chance to compete in the national festival is enough motivation. Others are inspired by the prospect of appearing in the press.
"When you present a performance and this is featured in newspapers, you feel good about yourself," Kaniki said. "People treat you with respect."
But this respect has taken a long time to build. "Some parents think theater is a waste of time and a front for seducing girls," said 22-year-old Rajab Kabucho, a founding member of Kizingo Arts in Mombasa.
In a bid to solve this problem, the coordinators have been inviting parents and community leaders to performances and explaining the objectives and impact of the groups' work. They also arrange for groups to perform at public functions, including those organized by local leaders. As a result, community members have come to appreciate the activities of the youth theater groups.
"As a parent, I'm for what the local youth are doing," said Mzee Abbas, a village elder. "Apart from keeping the youth away from mischief, they are also doing a very noble thing."
Earning this kind of trust has not been easy, Gathesha notes. "It's not about skills, it's not about knowledge," he said. "It's about gaining the confidence of these communities."
Such confidence is essential if communities are to embrace the theater outreach as their own and sustain it beyond the life of any donor-funded project, explains Mwarogo. That's why Artnet is establishing regional committees of community leaders to assist in planning and carrying out specific outreach events.
Three such committees have been established in the IMPACT-supported areas. Each committee of youth representatives, community leaders and technical officers from the Ministry of Health and other IMPACT partners meets three times a month to review progress, address problems and identify opportunities for advocacy.
Building Trust
Gaining the trust of communities was particularly difficult in Muslim societies, where men and women do not mix in public. The founder of the House of Dreams group recalls that getting young women to perform on stage was not easy.
"Since we normally rehearse in the evening, initially most girls could not get permission from their parents," Kaniki said. "For about four years, we had men playing female roles in our productions."
But this has changed as parents came to understand Artnet's objectives. As a result, more young women are permitted to join and play an active role in many of the theater groups. Today at least half the members of most of the groups are female.
In Mombasa, where Islam is widespread, deliberate efforts were made to reach out to its influential leaders.
"We've been inviting imams to our workshops and seminars, and they have been very supportive," said Mombasa coordinator Ikumi. "They like it when we teach the youth about abstinence and faithfulness."
Other religious leaders were also skeptical at first. Mwakideo, whose group is affiliated with the Anglican Church, remembers some early struggles.
"The pastor wondered why we chose secular themes," he recalled. "The church wanted us to confine ourselves to biblical themes in our plays."
Today, local churches and communities are largely supportive of the Artnet program. Parents sometimes provide food and bus fare for the young artists to take to their outreach performances. Some churches allow the groups to rehearse in their church halls during weekdays. And a growing number of companies, such as Bamburi Portland Cement Company and the Kenya Ports Authority, are inviting the theater groups to perform for their employees.
Local government officials have also lent support by providing venues for performances, portraying the young artists as role models for youth in their communities, and including the theater groups in some of their own HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.
"The fact that the local administration consults us when planning public events is evidence that the outreach program is an important feature in the community," Gathesha said.
Myths and Stigma
Another challenge facing the Artnet program is ensuring the groups have the capacity to provide accurate information and adapt to changing information needs. In fact, regional coordinators were appointed after Artnet staff realized that some performances were conveying inaccurate information and reinforcing negative stereotypes about people living with HIV/AIDS.
Since it is crucial that the young people get the proper information, Artnet seeks assistance from other partners in the IMPACT program in Kenya, including FHI, the International Centre for Reproductive Health, the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health and the Family Planning Association of Kenya. The national AIDS and sexually transmitted disease program is another important source of accurate information.
Such information counters misconceptions about HIV/AIDS in a country where many treat their relatives like outcasts once they test positive for HIV.
"I used to believe that AIDS could be transmitted through handshakes or mosquitoes, but after these plays, I have learnt a lot," said Joan, a 26-year-old single mother in the audience at one outreach event. "I'm not afraid to shake hands."
Another result of Artnet's quality assurance efforts has been an evolution of the themes tackled in the plays, poems and skits. While AIDS was initially depicted in beastly terms -- portrayed, for example, as the devil -- it now has a human face. Today's performances explore the need for compassion and care and how to prevent contracting HIV.
Artnet's efforts to enlist HIV-positive people in the theater outreach program have brought home the strength and staying power of the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in Kenya. Only a very few people living with HIV/AIDS dare to share their experiences with the audiences. Since many Kenyans do not understand that AIDS can take years to develop, testimonies by HIV-positive people with no visible symptoms are viewed with suspicion.
Artnet coordinators help young people examine such attitudes toward people living with HIV/AIDS. Mwarogo believes this is one their most important roles.
"They stimulate performers and, through them, audience members to think critically about taken-for-granted and often socially damaging assumptions, for example, about people living with HIV, gender difference, or sexual privilege," he said. "In so doing, Artnet is facilitating a process in which Kenyan youth are publicly confronting such issues as HIV/AIDS-related stigma, gender bias and sexual coercion."
A Growing Movement
Since 1998, Artnet's outreach events have reached at least 400,000 people. This figure is projected to swell in the near future as the Artnet program grows.
Gathesha explains that after a performance, it is not uncommon for the elders to ask a group to return to their village and impart theatrical skills to the young people there so that they, too, can start a theater group. As a result, the number of groups participating in the Artnet program had grown from 35 in 1995 to about 270 by March 2000.
This rapid growth presents a tremendous challenge for a program run mainly by artists with little managerial experience. Through the technical assistance of FHI, Artnet is putting in place systems to monitor and evaluate the impact of the theater intervention and to strengthen the managerial skills of the coordinators.
The youth theater groups are beginning to popularize the "ABCs of safe sex" -- abstinence, being faithful to one partner and using condoms -- among young people. They have also distributed more than 20,000 condoms in Mombasa alone. (Condom figures are not available for the other project areas.)
During some outreach events, the facilitators distribute free condoms obtained from the Ministry of Health. Whether they can do so, however, depends on the audience and venue. When a group performs for school youth or at a Catholic church event, for example, the members do not distribute condoms on the spot.
Sometimes young people themselves approach facilitators, asking for condoms. The facilitators often refer audience members to outlets that sell socially marketed condoms.
Although the number of condoms distributed is small compared to the number of people reached, it represents progress in a country where this method of HIV prevention has been much maligned. Kenya's Catholic clergy, in particular, are virulently opposed to making condoms available to youth, saying they would be passports to immorality.
In fact, condoms have been considered so controversial that most Kenyan politicians have avoided discussion of their use in HIV/AIDS prevention. One of the most steadfast opponents of condom promotion, Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, recently shocked the nation by appearing to reverse his position in a public statement.
President Moi declared HIV/AIDS a national disaster late in 1999, but many consider this a decade too late. Since the first AIDS cases were reported in the country in 1987, more than 1.9 million Kenyans -- about 13 percent of the adult population -- have been infected with HIV.
As of October 1999, an estimated 17 percent of adults in urban areas and 13 percent of adults in rural areas were living with HIV. Every day, about 500 Kenyans die of an AIDS-related illness.
The Artnet Waves program's main audience -- young people ages 15 to 24 -- are among the most vulnerable to HIV infection. A 1999 survey conducted by the Joint United Nation's Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city, found that 38 percent of young people in this age group were HIV-positive. Girls and young women were more than twice as likely to be infected as their male counterparts.
Despite these alarming statistics, open debate about matters of sexuality is still rare in Kenya, and there is a huge unmet need for reproductive health information among young people. Disenchanted by the societal conspiracy of silence as their friends and relatives die, the young people of the Artnet program have decided to change it all.
--Peter Kimani and George Obanyi
Peter Kimani is a Kenyan feature writer and theater critic. George Obanyi is a Kenyan freelance journalist.
