fwd: 22 years old, widowed and a mother to 14

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22 years old, widowed and a mother to 14

By STEPHANIE NOLEN

Monday, January 30, 2006 Page A1

SAURI, KENYA -- At first, she blames it on lack of time. She just hasn't had

the time to go into town, 10 kilometres away, and get an HIV test, Millicent

Atieno Omondi says -- even though, since her husband died last year on the

heels of his two other wives, she has been haunted by the fear that it might

have been AIDS that killed them.

But you can understand when she says she doesn't have time. The death of her

husband and two co-wives has left Ms. Omondi, just 22, in charge of 14

children. Three are near her own age, and fending for themselves, but 11 are

younger, and need not only her care but her tiny wages as a day labourer on

nearby farms to feed them.

Spend a few hours talking with Ms. Omondi, though, in the shade of her small

mud house, and something else emerges. " No time, but no courage, that's the

main thing. "

It is one thing to worry she may have HIV, quite another to have that

confirmed -- and what could she say to the small children relying on her?

But of course, she fears she may be infected, as a quarter of the people in

her community are. " I've been so worried, I could be walking around with the

disease and not even knowing. "

Ms. Omondi confesses quietly that she is fairly certain that her husband,

and her two co-wives, must have died of AIDS -- all were sick with lingering

illnesses for at least six months -- but none were tested. She has heard

that the regional hospital now has drugs for some people with AIDS, so if

she had HIV, she need not die like her husband and his other wives. But long

before she ever gets drugs, the shame of it all, of having people in her

village know, might kill her, she says.

Ms. Omondi was married seven years ago, a largely economic transaction that

brought her healthy young labour into a household where people were already

falling ill. Her husband already had two wives but grew enough corn to

support them all in a house with a sofa and chairs and a silky curtain to

divide the rooms. The wives died not long after, in 1999, and by 2004 her

husband was bedridden.

When he died, he left Ms. Omondi, then just 20, with the 14 children -- only

two of them her own.

" It is quite a few, " she says with gentle understatement.

Yet perhaps the most astonishing thing about Ms. Omondi's house full of

children is that it isn't all that rare. There are 650,000 children orphaned

by AIDS in Kenya, some 12.3 million across sub-Saharan Africa. Those people

left alive and comparatively healthy struggle to cope in situations that

were inconceivable only a generation ago.

Two of the eldest girls Ms. Omondi inherited have married and left the

house, and the eldest boy has gone off to look for casual labour. That's how

Ms. Omondi keeps the rest, by working all day on the plots of richer

villagers, for 70 shillings ($1.12), from sunup to sundown.

" Sometimes we eat and sometimes we go hungry, " she says. " Sometimes the

church gives us clothes, when they have them, and shoes -- but most of the

children have only one set of clothes, and they go barefoot. "

Only the two youngest children are in school. Primary education is free only

up to Grade 6 in Kenya, and Ms. Omondi can't afford to pay for the others to

go.

A recent study of sub-Saharan Africa by Human Rights Watch found that

HIV/AIDS is causing a sharp deterioration in children's access to school --

which is already poor across much of the continent -- and greatly increasing

the isolation and abuse of orphans.

Human Rights Watch's report is sharply critical of African governments for

their failure to do more to assist children orphaned by AIDS, starting with

the basic step of removing fees on education. " Governments seemed content to

let the poor help the poor, rather than assuming responsibility for children

whose families had been decimated by HIV/AIDS. "

Ms. Omondi got a firsthand lesson in the poor helping the poor a few months

ago, when better-off villagers worked together to build her a new house

large enough to hold her whole brood. " I have a house, which I never

imagined I would have in my life, " she says, twisting girlish hands in

pleasure.

She won't be sleeping in it any time soon, however: In the customs of her

people, the Luo, as a widow she cannot sleep in her new house until she has

been " cleansed " by having sex with another man -- usually a person

designated to sleep with all widows.

Ms. Omondi dreads it, but sees little choice.

" I don't like the idea, but I might have problems with the community if I

don't accept it, " she says. " If it were up to me, I would rather just stay

single. "

Single, and mother of 14.

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