AAM DISPATCH

Meet Bobi Wine, “President of the Ghetto,” a rapper who is one of Uganda’s biggest stars. He’s also – as I learned in a visit to the Presidents White House today – just about this most articulate, educated force for positive HIV/AIDS messaging in Uganda today.

Son of a polygamous father, and one of 43 children, Wine is a self described bad-boy whose earliest hit cautioned his fans “not to be fools” when it comes to AIDS and always use a condom. Sitting on his front patio (he’s just getting over a bought with malaria) he warned about the double threat of poverty and HIV, and railed against an evangelical Christian culture which – right up to the first lady (the wife of Uganda’s President that is) – has failed in its responsibility to educate young people about safe sex. Wine is a realist who said in the community he comes from, a 19-year-old virgin is a rarity, and the only reliable protection from disease is a condom.

Elections are approaching next year, and Wine has just released a new single, whose message he says is, “Don’t let voting tear us apart” – a thinly veiled reference to the violence often associated with elections here. Wine said his model for Uganda is the image of “Obama and McCain, sitting at the same table, even after the election is over.”

Watch one of Bobi’s most popular songs, Carolina, which seems to deal with a young girl and her health issues.

Matt Ozug Africa, Global Health, Uganda

Kampala, Uganda: Kansas City evangelical preacher Lou Engel brought his movement “The Call” to Kampala’s Makarere University this Sunday. The day-long service kicked off a week of “prayer and repentance” for the nation of Uganda. Reverend Engel last made headlines with a massive stadium event in support of Prop 8 – which killed same-sex marriage in California.

This time, Engle has walked smack into a brewing tempest around a piece of proposed Ugandan legislation that would suggest the death penalty for HIV positive homosexuals who engage in sexual relations. It’s a controversy Engle claims he had no knowledge of when he planned The Call Uganda.

While Engle walked the line and never openly supported the bill, he called Uganda “ground zero” for a religious revival, and prayed the nation would “hold fast its biblical values.” And while the event’s mc repeated the claim that there was to be no agenda, and no speeches, Engle was joined on stage by a host of Ugandan pastors who openly called for the passage of the anti-gay legislation.

Throughout the day, between jazz-gospel hymns, a slate of Ugandan evangelical pastors prayed for redemption from a recurring list sins: terrorism; government corruption; witchcraft, including human sacrifice and necromancy; and homosexuality.

For his part, Engle said that the anti-gay bill was a controversy created by NGOs, the UN and UNICEF, who were promoting an agenda the Ugandan pastors didn’t ask for. But anti-gay rhetoric is commonplace in Uganda, where one church leader has even shown gay-porn to his congregation, to illustrate his point.

Unitarian pastor Patricia Ackerman at the UN has condemned Engle’s visit, and local Ugandan Gay rights activists say “The Call” is bound to influence passage of the anti-gay legislation and is exacerbating a dangerous climate here for gay men and women, where being gay is already punishable by life in prison.

The Call Uganda ends Friday with a march through downtown Kampala

Matt Ozug Africa, Global Health

Sheik Hassan Kinyua Omari talks on his cell phone in front of the memorial wall at the Memorial Park Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, the site of the former US Embassy that was bombed on August 7,1998. His uncle's name is among the 219 names engraved on the wall – 207 Kenyans and 12 Americans lost their lives that day.

“What do you want to talk to this guy for?” My cab driver waved his hand toward Sheik Hassan Kinyua Omari, who stood on the muddy corner we’d just pulled up to, wearing a matching white thawb and head cover. Hassan and the driver had spoken twice on my cell phone as we tried to locate the “Media House” where he was waiting for me. I thought the cab driver was surprised to see that the man on the other end of the line, who he’d been frustrated with for giving him “bad directions,” was a Muslim sheik.

More likely, Hassan told me later, he was surprised that an American was meeting up with a Muslim. “The Kenyan people,” he laughed, “they don’t understand. They think Muslims and Americans do not like each other.”

Because of his inter-faith work and his status among Muslims here, Hassan has become a de facto diplomat — a sort of token sheik — who US Embassy officials have called on in tense times. He is the Deputy Director of Religious Affairs of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims and is fluent in English, Kiswahili and Arabic. Just after the embassy was bombed in 1998, Hassan was asked to deliver a public prayer. (At the time, he was only about 20 years old).

“And for sure, they will be calling me tomorrow,” he said, smiling and knowingly pointing a finger in the air.

The front page of today’s Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper, was dominated by the headline, “US dollars fueling Church campaign.” According to the report, the American Centre for Law and Justice, founded in 1990 by televangelist Pat Robertson (its Nairobi branch is called East Africa Centre for Law and Justice), has pledged tens of thousands of dollars to defeat the proposed constitution that allows abortion where the mother’s life is in danger… and (this is the part rubbing Muslims here the wrong way) that retains Muslim kadhis’ courts, which have limited authority to to arbitrate disputes between Muslims over marriage, divorce, or inheritance. Hassan expects he will be asked to help mitigate fears among Kenyan Muslims that this is more evidence of an American plot to wipe out Islam.

Read more…

Jordana Gustafson Africa, Global Health, Religion

Cornelius Gaskins and Wallace Corbett

“We often speak about AIDS as if it’s going on somewhere else. And for good reason – this is a virus that has touched lives and decimated communities around the world, particularly in Africa. But often overlooked is the fact that we face a serious HIV/AIDS epidemic of our own – right here in Washington, DC and right here in the United States of America.”
– President Obama, Speech from October 2009

Washington DC has the dubious distinction of being America’s AIDS capital. A recent study estimated that the HIV infection rate in Washington DC is 3%, the highest in the U.S. To put that figure in perspective, the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization consider a 1% infection rate as the threshold for a severe epidemic. While the national infection rate is well below that 1%  threshold, in some cities, like Washington DC, the problem is enormous.

Many health experts believe that the true infection rate in Washington DC is much higher. Among black men over 40, that figure jumps to about one in ten. Cornelius Gaskins and Wallace Corbett both fall into that category: black, over 40 and infected with HIV. They share with us a few moments of reflection and offer a window into the ways in which the virus has – or has not – shaped their lives. Watch >

Javier Barrera Global Health

When the AIDS virus first emerged almost three decades ago, a diagnosis was as good as a death sentence. Today, thanks to advances in medicine, that’s no longer the case. 30 million people in the world are living with HIV, and they are living longer, healthier lives. But, the bigger challenge is still prevention. Last year, 2.7 million more people contracted HIV, and despite nearly thirty years of awareness, there are many countries where the infection rates are still growing.

In 2003, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched to combat global HIV/AIDS – the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in history. The Bush Administration’s emergency response to the AIDS crisis saved the lives of millions in Africa. The challenge for the Obama Administration is now to transition the emergency response into sustainable ones by making greater strides in reducing the number who contract the disease.

America Abroad’s Sean Carberry speaks with Dr. Nandini Oomman, director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor at the Center for Global Development, about the future of PEPFAR under the Obama Administration, and the challenges of developing global strategies for AIDS prevention (excerpt):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

On America Abroad, we explore some of the successes, failures, and challenges of containing the spread of HIV. We visit Brazil, a country that has implemented effective and controversial strategies to reduce the spread of the disease. On the other end of the spectrum, South Africa, where the disease continues to ravage the nation. We also examine the Bush Administration’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that’s provided life-saving treatment for over two million Africans, but has been less successful in preventing new infections. Listen to the entire program, AIDS: The Politics of Prevention >

Javier Barrera Global Health