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Kenyan TV Journalists Expose Cultural Practices That Spread HIV/AIDS

November 30, 2009

Married at 13, HIV-Positive and Widowed at 14

Internews Internews Kenya trainer Ernest Waititu coaches a journalist in Addis Ababa.

“When I was informed I was HIV-positive, I shared the news with my husband. He warned me against disclosing my status to anyone. I did not dare defy his orders,” says Tatu Saidi, a 14-year-old widow from the Coast Province of Kenya.

As a young subservient wife, Tatu was aware her husband had other relationships but could not act. “My husband was immature and did not understand the difference between being single and being married. He continued to behave as though he did not have a wife,” says Tatu.

Uninformed about birth control, young Tatu became pregnant soon after marriage. It was during one of her prenatal checkups that she learned that she was HIV-positive. Her husband died a few months later, of what Tatu believes were AIDS-related complications.

HIV is strongly associated with immorality in Kenya, and the social stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in her deeply religious community was too much for Tatu to feel comfortable revealing her status. Church members have even been excommunicated when they disclosed their HIV status.

Tatu’s father married her off when she was 13, ending her education. Early marriage is common in the region where Tatu lives and girls as young as nine are often married off to older suitors.

As Kenya continues to intensify its efforts against the spread of HIV, some elements of traditional cultural practices in various parts of the country such as Coast Province continue to hinder the success of these efforts.

Internews’ Kenya office is working with local journalists to increase awareness about the cultural practices that can lead to the spread of HIV and to reduce stigma so that people will seek the information they need to make decisions about their lives.

Tatu’s story is one of several that were produced during a ten-day training session that Internews conducted in September for six television journalists in Kilifi District in Coast Province, where HIV infection is on the rise.

“Three Stones” Practice Triples Women’s Exposure

Another traditional practice that contributes to the spread of HIV in Kenya is meko tatu, when a woman has three relationships at once. Common among the Miji Kenda tribes that largely populate the coast, meko tatu contributes to the high infection rate in Coast Province. Translated from Kiswahili, meko tatu means “three stones,” signifying the three stones used to balance a cooking pot in traditional kitchens.

A story produced in the Internews workshop featured an interview with Zena Thuva, a resident of Mnarani village and a community health worker. “The belief here is that a woman can’t function normally with one man,” Thuva says in the program. “She needs the support of two other men to survive. She looks for another man to buy her clothes and shoes, and yet another man to finance her grooming needs such as hair, nails and make up. All these goodies are in exchange for sex.”

Meko tatu is a common practice in Kilifi district for both married and unmarried women. Many of these women do not use condoms with their various sexual partners. Interestingly, the practice is not shrouded in secrecy—it is openly talked about and is an accepted part of the culture. “This has been one of the greatest contributions to the spread of HIV in this community,” says Thuva.

Kilifi district is home to about half a million people. Here, one in seven people is HIV-positive.

Meshack Mwangale, the Kilifi District AIDS and STI Control Coordinator (DASCO), is also interviewed, saying, “It is true that many couples today are involved in extra-marital affairs. Either we are not teaching the public correctly, or the public is not adhering to safe behavioral practices.”

As a result of the Internews journalism training and field mentoring sessions, these and several other feature stories on HIV/AIDS have been broadcast. Internews continues to mentor the six journalists as they cover more such stories.

Internews’ health journalism program in Kenya is funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development/US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

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