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The Salvation Army's Kibera compound lies not 100 yards from the slum's beer brewery. The odors of fermenting grain float overhead as Salvationist Captain Isaac Iballa and his wife Rose assemble a group of volunteers on a sunny Thursday morning. The volunteers are all members of the Anti-HIV/AIDS Self-Help Group. AIDS has brought death early and often into the lives of innumerable families in Kibera.

International health experts warn that the global AIDS epidemic is centered in eastern and southern Africa and that the 278 million people in 34 countries are at grave risk of infection and death. Since a majority of people in this region of Africa are Christian, health officials are cultivating new relationships with churches.

Public health officials are increasingly desperate to find effective ways of slowing new HIV infections. Health leaders openly recognize that the arrival of a safe and effective AIDS vaccine is in the distant future. Also, state-of-the-art AIDS drug therapy is rarely available for complicated political and economic reasons. Finally, the healthcare system in the region is one of the weakest worldwide and at times contributes to the spread of HIV due to inadequate blood screening and clinical hygiene. Health experts see churches and their community networks as unrivaled in their potential to fight AIDS through community awareness, care for the sick, and encouraging either sexual fidelity or abstinence.

Peter Kamau Chege is chairman of the Salvationist-sponsored self-help group in Kibera. He is among the few Kenyans with gray hair, because only 3 percent of Africans in the region live to 65 or older. Two years ago, Chege was one of the many heavy-drinking patrons who thronged Kibera's bars. "I was like a man with my hand in the fire," he once told his fellow volunteers, "and you helped me pull it out." Since his commitment to Christianity, Chege has worked to motivate and mobilize Kibera's Christians against AIDS.

"Since we don't have a cure, we have to create awareness, to sensitize. When your neighbor is suffering, you are suffering," he tells the volunteers. The self-help group has met weekly since 1995. Every volunteer is required to make a cash donation, a significant sacrifice in Kenya, where the average per-capita income is less than $6 per week. The donations purchase sugar or other staples that volunteers distribute freely when they fan out into Kibera to visit the sick.

Home visits form the centerpiece of the self-help group's approach. As the volunteers end their meeting, they separate into teams. On this occasion, the teams are joined by several African Christian leaders who have come to study how to replicate the group's successes. One team, after hiking through a hilly section of the Kibera slum, arrives at the one-room windowless dwelling of Bontiface Odhiambo. Rising from his cot, Odhiambo bears telltale signs of AIDS, including severe weight loss, but he does not openly acknowledge the nature of his illness. "I've been unable to travel home because I don't have enough money," Odhiambo tells Iballa and his team. He pays 1,000 Kenyan shillings a month for rent, which is more than many Kibera residents earn in a month. Volunteers sometimes discover that people with AIDS flee their families to hide in Kenya's slums, eventually re turning home when they are days away from death.

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February 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 2