Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks with Assumption Sister Florence Muia.

Assumption Sister Florence Muia, 45, was in Chicago studying for a master’s degree in pastoral counseling when the calling came to her. Far from her Kenyan homeland, Muia could not ignore the barrage of news about the epidemic of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and the despair felt by many of the epidemic’s victims.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been hit particularly hard; although Kenya has fared better than some neighboring countries, an estimated 2 million of its 30 million people are infected, and some 700 die every day. Already, about 1.5 million have perished, and a million children left orphans.

Now, a year and a half after finishing her degree, Muia is trying to find funding to get her project, Upendo Village, off the ground, with the help of a board of directors that includes people from Loyola University’s Jesuit community and the Wheaton Franciscan Sisters from DuPage County. Upendo is the Swahili word for love, and that’s what she wants to build: a village of love.

The Catholic New World: Why did you decide to start an AIDS project in Kenya when you were in Chicago?

Sister Florence Muia: I thought that I cannot just sit and watch, especially now that I was equipped in this field (with a pastoral counseling degree). I felt I needed to do something about it. When I was I here in this country, I was exposed to many workshops and seminars on this topic, especially the National Catholic AIDS Network, which meets at Loyola University. I was touched by what these people are doing to fight AIDS, and I learned that in this country, because of the response and the involvement of so many people, and especially because of the medications, it has moved from a terminal illness to being a chronic illness. Even though we are very far in my country from getting retrovirals (medications), a little effort will do good more than sitting back and waiting for someone else to do it.

After graduation, I went back home and discussed it at length with my community. They were thrilled, because everybody is really hit by this epidemic. Even if you are not infected, you are affected.

There is virtually no family in Kenya that has not been touched in one way or another by this epidemic. You have either lost a relative or you have lost a close friend.

TCNW: How much groundwork have you done?

SFM: I did go to Kenya this year to do more groundwork, to look for a site. The Catholic Diocese of Nakuru was really pleased to offer me a place, because it is in one the areas that has been very hit by the AIDS epidemic, in a parish where I used to work, a parish called Naivasha, also called St. Francis Xavier. They offered me two existing classrooms, which were being used formerly for a school. I said we need to begin small, since we don’t have even funding. The Wheaton Franciscan Sisters, when I told them I had been offered this place, gave some seed money to begin the renovation. I also got some money from the Jesuit community here at Loyola so I could go back and do more, and they have also given assistance to the project.

TCNW: How will the project start, and how will it grow?

SFM: When I went, besides the two rooms, after discussing it with the parish council leadership, they decided to give me a four-acre piece of land for future development of the project. The two classrooms can only be used temporarily, and they are very small. One of our sisters has been supervising the renovations, and the renovations are complete. The two classrooms can house eight residents. The project is starting as a shelter for women and their children who are living with HIV and AIDS, especially those who are living in absolute poverty and without any care.

Most of them, once they fall sick, they cannot work anymore, and they are left to die in destitution, without any care, without any food, and children are forced now to drop out of school to care for their dying parents. Right now, one of my potential clients has lost her battle to AIDS—a potential client I interviewed when I went back home—and that is very painful to me. She was being taken care of by her own 7-year-old daughter. She had already lost her husband, and she had lost another child to AIDS, and her 15-year-old daughter ran away after seeing the mother deteriorating so much she could not deal with the grief. The mother was left under the care of the 7-year-old, who is also (HIV) positive.

When I visited, I found them living in destitution, looking outside for someone to come from somewhere, to offer them some food. They have so many basic living needs, more than one can imagine. We are not even talking about retrovirals; they can’t even get painkillers. Most of them are dying in a lot of desperateness. And we are talking about a country with 2.2 million infected—and these are just the cases which are being recorded, because there are many in the rural areas with no access to medical care.

TCNW: How much money do you need to start with your two classrooms?

SFM: One of the major needs we’re facing right now is operational expenses, which would go to feed people, to pay members of the staff. I’m looking for initial funding of $75,000 for the first year. I would like to hire a cook, because one of the things I would like to provide for is proper nutrition for these people. My idea is to help them regain their strength and maybe their immunity to the extent possible, and maybe to prolong their life.

Upendo is the Swahili word of love, so my idea is to provide a village of love, where these people can experience love and support. AIDS is so much stigmatized, and once people are known to be infected, they are ostracized still in my country. Nobody wants to come close to them, and children are teased in schools if their parents or they are known to have that problem. Nobody wants to associate with them.

Why I begin with women is they are so economically disadvantaged in so many ways. One, when parents are faced with educating children, they will always choose the male child as opposed to the girl child. So that empowers men more than women. Also women do not inherit parents’ property because of cultural issues—they will be married off, and that’s it. So you find that in so many ways they will not be able to support themselves—they have no way of earning a living. The burden of running a family is so much on the women, because when the men go to the cities, the women are left in the rural areas to look after the kids and do all the kinds of work you can think of, with very, very little resources, if anything.

If women are not even married, they are worse off, because then they are the breadwinners. So when they get infected with HIV, the children are left with nobody.

TCNW: How are you trying to raise money?

SFM: Writing applications for donations to different religious communities, different groups. I’m hoping we may be able to also approach corporations now that we have the tax exemption, and approach individuals. Any person of good will—I am not choosing, regardless of their faith affiliation.

What I’m looking at is offering proper nutrition, basic health care, medications, prescriptions. I’m also looking at providing them with counseling services, one-on-one and as a group, mental health services. Besides having the residence, we want to offer community education. We will do community outreach, education on HIV and AIDS, and we will also try to support those who have a family support system and who are living with their own families with HIV.

We are not intending to have a hospice. This place will be a transitional place. My idea is when they come in we will try to help them to process whatever is happening and do whatever we can to support them so that they can stand on their own and learn some living skills so they can carry on with life. We want to teach them some basic skills like crafts, or if they can take care of a cow, we will try to support them. The milk will supplement their families’ nutrition and they can sell the surplus for their income. If they can keep even poultry, they can supplement their families’ nutrition and have some income. We want to give them the support they need so they can carry on with life, until God wants them.

My idea is to prolong life as long as we can. Prolonging life will eliminate early orphanage of children. If we can help a mother to live the next five or 10 years, that to me will be an achievement, to see a child grow at least to an age when that child can live on his or her own in the absence of the parent.

TCNW: Do you ever give up hope?

SFM: I know a lot of people say, what can you do with the kind of statistics we are reading. But I believe one life is worthy, one life is worth living. If we can help even one out of the two million, then I think for me that will be a great achievement. We will reduce the numbers we are hearing that every day we lose 700 people to AIDS-related people.

And of course, AIDS is also related to poverty. You cannot separate the two. Most of the women, if they are faced with the problem of poverty, they will do anything for a living, including prostitution, at the risk to their own life. They will engage in risky behavior, because a mother won’t watch her child dying. You tell her, don’t prostitute, but she would rather prostitute and feed that child and deal with the consequences later than to watch that child starve. There are a lot of issues in play here.

Sometimes people look at the numbers and wonder if people there are very loose and promiscuous, but there are a lot of issues related to the spread. Most of it is heterosexual. The economy is in the drains, people cannot access medications—even in the government hospitals, there are no painkillers. …

There is no money there to provide even for the basic needs. They are even discriminated against in the hospitals. They say, why give the medication to someone who is going to die anyway? They are facing that kind of discrimination. Most of the beds in government hospitals are occupied people who are being treated for AIDS-related illnesses, and they are not very kindly treated. Even women whose husbands die, they have to fight with the in-laws for the inheritance, because they know she is infected too, and the law does not protect them well.

For more information, contact Muia at (773) 973-0148 or [email protected].

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