Former Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland was recently appointed the Ambassador for MTV's "Staying Alive" Foundation. The purpose of the foundation is empower young people to protect them against the disease.
Kelly arrived at the end of last week at the Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya to take a stand against the public stigma of taking the test. "For me, knowing your status is glamorous because then you get to carry that with you and you get to protect yourself," she said.
During the test, a 22 year old Kenyan man named John Ngugi sat next to Kelly in a small counseling room in the public hospital. Just like Kelly, the young Kenyan wanted to know his status, but couldn't from suppressing a large grin from the sheer excitement of sitting next to the star. "As a young person from Mathare slum and having a super star to actually have a test with," said Ngugi, "It is just a big promise for me and a big promise for my community and I am just grateful for the test."
Major props go out to Kelly for doing such an brave and hororable thing to help a country that has been riddled with the death and torment of such an illness. Just like most of Africa, Kenya is also struggling with the pandemic. UNAIDS, the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, estimates that more than 22 million adults and children are living with HIV on the continent. You know, when it get's that widely spreaded, you have to wonder if there is anything that is being done over there at all to prevent the spread. But when you have customs in certain places where the men think that if they have AIDS and they have sex with a virgin, it will cure it, the small hope for them that you may have, seems to diminish almost completely. They are always in my prayers.
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