Friday we drove to Sabatia to visit Erica. We toured the eye hospital, a very modern private hospital and the regional clinic, a struggling public facility. The people are wonderful and helpful, but they lack drugs and medical equipment to help people. Erica assists with several support groups from this clinic.

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Today the HIV and AIDS support group met at the Salvation Army compound down the street. A charitable organization had donated two heifers to the group. The goal is the group will assist the person raising the heifer. The milk sold will be income for the group and gradually, as offspring are produced, each one in the group will have their own cow.

They had skits, singing, group participation, and talks from dignitaries-- about half in English, half in Luhya. They were very pleased we were there. And probably more was in English than otherwise, as some of the women only speak Luhya. I got the feeling our attendance added to the importance to the ceremony. It was really fun to be there! The skit was in Luyha, but entertaining none-the-less as Erica translated some of it—a drunken husband, wives letting other men move in, husbands taking other women—all ways to spread AIDS and all resoundly condemned. Some of the speakers touched on the difficulty of widows finding school fees for their children and the need to combine outside support.

Occasionally there would be a kind of line dancing where the group members would get up, dance down the aisles, and gather in the front. One of the songs Erica translated as: Be sure to take your AIDs drugs every day. The goal is to teach people AIDs is not a death sentence. The theme is to “Live Positively” taking the stigma of testing positively, and turning it to mean living with joy and confidence. Attitude makes a big difference. Proper nutrition, reducing stress, drugs, all these can help a person live in good health for years.

For some reason a rooster was given to the dignitary… a thank you for coming? A thank you for the cows? I don’t know. But it was interesting having the occasional “cluck” during the ceremonies. Afterwards, they went out to receive the cows. The cows got quite excited about it as this group of 30-50 mostly women converged toward them singing, playing drums, and holding out a wreath and scarf to decorate the new gifts. Note the decorated cow's backside in the photo.

After, we gave Erica some church books for her to use when she can’t afford to travel to Kisumu. We took a different road home and didn’t get lost! This “short cut” was a pretty good road, but connected us back to the main road about the time the pot-holes began.