A SCHOOL FOR ALL CHILDREN
ANNE WAITHERA
NAIROBI, KENYA

(CHILDREN PLAYING)

WAITHERA:
It’s break time at Hekima Primary School.
The girls are skipping and the boys are playing football and hide and seek games.
No one would think one out of three of them are HIV-positive.  
They look healthy, and play like children in any other school.
But there is one big difference from other schools: Here no one discriminates against HIV-positive children.
For almost three years, the school has made a point of admitting such children.
Most of them are from the Nyumabani home for AIDS orphans in Nairobi.
The headmistress Mary Gichuhi says she had no second thoughts because she believed Nyumbani’s children had the right to education.

MARY GICHUHI:
The first time Nyumbani came to me, they found me at school they told have children and they told me they are HIV positive and they have been refused to other schools where they go to. Then I thought, these children, will they be alright, mixing with other children? They told me there is no problem. I didn’t even have time to think or go back and ask anybody. I just took them. Yes, I will take them.

(CHILDREN PLAYING)

WAITHERA:
Hekima’s children know who is HIV-positive and who is not. 
But, because they’ve been taught about AIDS, it really doesn’t matter.
HIV-positive and negative children play with each other without any prejudice.
Children told their parents about their friends.
And Ms. Gichiu says soon the parents also wanted to know more.

MARY GICHUHI:
The first thing I noticed is that parents, got interested in knowing, who are these Nyumbani children and in fact, before long some parents had even got interested and gone to visit Nyumbani.

WAITHERA:
Sadly, not all parents at Hekima were ready to accept these HIV positive children. Some parents were so upset that they took drastic action.

MARY GICHUHI:
But as time went by, we started noticing that quite a number of parents were withdrawing their children and we knew that it was because of the HIV children we had.

(CHILDREN RUNNING TO CLASS)

WAITHERA:  
Break time is over.
The rest of the day’s classes have to continue.

(CHILDREN IN CLASS)

WAITHERA
It’s not only the children who had to be taught about AIDS.
Teachers also had to learn that HIV-positive children pose no danger to them. 
Teacher Evans Maranga says it wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.   

EVANS MARANGA:
It was difficult because AIDS was a kind of a new thing, you know, and then you hear of people with AIDS and so on. But here we have children who are coming to school who are actually identified as HIV positive. So there was that stigma about AIDS…and then the other children who are negative. So we could not know exactly how to handle them and put them together with the rest.

REPORTER:
Were you scared that maybe they could give you AIDS?

EVANS MARANGA:
Sure at the start cause there was so much misinformation about AIDS and then people would always get scared that so and so is HIV-positive and so on. But as time went on and through information we just got used to the whole issue and we were able to handle them.

WAITHERA:
Teachers in Hekima have come a long way.
They’ve come to realize that being open about children’s HIV status is better, than not talking about it.

EVANS MARANGA:
I wonder whether parents know that children out there are HIV-positive too? Because you are pulling a child from here, taking him to a public school…because the same, same percentage you find in our school is also out there.

WAITHERA:
Teaching Hekima’s children about HIV/AIDS, has made everyone accept each other.

MARY GICHUHI:
We should treat AIDS children like just any other children and love them and care for them. I would like to tell the other people who are scared about AIDS that they cannot be infected by touching.

(SCHOOL BELL RINGING)

WAITHERA:
Hekima Primary’s day has day has come to an end.
And as we leave the school, I realize that the courage of one person can change an entire community’s perception about HIV/AIDS.
It takes people the like headmistress of this school, Mary Gichuhi, to change the world.

MARY GICHUHI:
I still feel very confident that with more awareness, more parents will feel that there’s nothing to fear to take their children to be with other children - even those who are known to be HIV. Because there are others that are not known and we are mixing with them everywhere, so my appeal would be that everybody would feel that these children are just children like the others and they need their right. They need to be loved. They need to mix with other children in school and in other places.