International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies - 17 December 2003
Pekka Reinikainen, in Mombasa

We are waiting in a dark ante-room opposite a stairway leading to the first floor of a beautifully decaying old whitewashed building in the heart of Mombasa's old town.

Women of different ages, wearing black and veiled from the blinding brightness of the sunny street, enter and climb the stairs, vanishing through a pair of elaborately carved doors. They go in there to sing this song that all but mesmerises me.

We are waiting for Sheikh Khitamy to work through his schedule of appointments. After a busy morning teaching in one of Mombasa's up-market private schools, Sheikh Khitamy doubles up in the afternoons as one of the most popular herbalists in Kenya's Coast Province. He receives his clients in this, one of the finer balconied buildings, next to his mosque.

As the last of today's clients emerges, clutching a bottle of greenish potion, Sheikh Khitamy greets us with a firm handshake and takes us to the mosque for a chat.

Influential

Khitamy is an influential man. As well as being a leader of the local Muslim community, he is the imam of the Mandhry mosque, the oldest in Mombasa, built by the Arabs some 500 years ago.

As we sit on the floor in a cool corner of the mosque, the sheikh explains the significance of the mosque. "Nobody can advocate things to these communities effectively from their ivory towers in Nairobi or faraway foreign cities. Things will have to happen here, right here, to have an effect."

"Change in our Muslim communities starts from the mosques. Our people deal with their issues through the mosques, through their religious leaders," he says.

HIV/AIDS is one such area where change is being effected. When he speaks about this issue, there is a trace of self-criticism in Khitamy's words: "The relevant bodies did not start this on the right footing."

He says that HIV/AIDS was not initially taken as something tangible, real, medical. It was regarded as something that did not concern Muslims at all.

Speak up

"This was soon proven not to be true. These are our sons and daughters, our neighbours, us who are infected, affected and dying. We need to speak up, especially we, the religious leaders."

Sheikh Khitamy says he uses the opportunity of evening prayers to address the faithful. "I consider myself a layman when it comes to HIV/AIDS. I do not know nearly enough. Most of the imams of Kenya are in that same situation, or worse. We need information and we need it badly," he says.

"So much money, mostly from outsiders, has been used to advocate, to make noise about the issue," he says, "but so little to address HIV/AIDS from within. This has to change. The situation is getting bad, really bad in the rural communities. We must attack this thing head-on. Now."

Sheikh Idriss, current chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK), has been active in HIV/AIDS issues for some time already. "When I decided to take up this question in cooperation with the CIPK, people dismissed it as waste of valuable time. There are still people today in denial, claiming that Muslims are not affected by the virus."

Not shameful

There are others, though, who have taken on board the message. A couple from Sheikh Idriss' congregation in the Majengo area of Mombasa, who are about to be married have gone to the Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) clinic and thereafter to the sheikh to assure him of their responsible behaviour. "This is now becoming more widely accepted," he says, "both within the Shia as well as the Sunni Muslim communities."

"We are past the guilt question, I think. People have understood that having been infected with HIV is not a result of some shameful act," Idriss, who has attended some Kenya Red Cross workshops on HIV/AIDS to gain knowledge of the issue, explains.

"Personally, seeing the needs every day, I would gladly see the International Federation increase the speed of it's HIV/AIDS work to double or more from what is done today," he emphasises.

The Mombasa branch of the Kenya Red Cross is currently running an innovative pilot project on home-based community care in Majengo, a neighbourhood of some 42,000 people, 80 per cent of whom are Muslims.

According to Idriss, of the approximately 120 imams of the Mombasa area, some two-thirds may be positively engaged in HIV/AIDS issues.

In neighbouring Somalia, women found to be HIV-positive can still today be stoned to death. In Sudan, another Muslim-majority neighbour of Kenya, HIV-positive patients, regardless of the reason for their hospitalisation, are isolated in a special ward at Khartoum's Central Hospital.

The examples of sheikhs such as Khitamy and Idriss and the Muslim community of Mombasa as a whole are much needed in the region.
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