Book on Africa Against AIDS - Anthology of Poems for Youth
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Dear colleagues,
I thought perhaps it would be good to take this opportunity to
share with you a bit about the background of the book "Africa
Against AIDS - Anthology of Poems for Youth", so to create more
interest in you. Indeed all the studies show that Africa is the
continent the hardest hit by the pandemic, besides malaria and TB
which also kill, and also the endless African conflicts which are
aggravating factors. When a book makes its appearance in the pub-
lic, something must have triggered it. As an HIV/AIDS activist, I
thought something had to be done: I used to be a shy activist in
the late 80s in my country, then Zaire (DR Congo), when this cam-
paign started because of lack of more information about HIV/AIDS.
As creator, author, and editor of this book, I would humbly say
that the idea of this book was born in me in 1998, after the
passing away of my elder sister, Perpetue Afetia, due to AIDS in
Bunia, Ituri (DRC), without any basic treatment, as the country
continued sinking deeper into the war. From that time on I became
a strong activist (awareness and prevention among youth) and
thought of "Africa Against AIDS", a book that would be made of
poems to educate the youth and to be dedicated to all the youth
in Africa.
Another thing is that I noticed that there are more meetings than
actions on fighting the disease. I wanted to do something for the
youth which will touch all Africa, therefore the first proposal
divided in two phases were sent to BBC (British Broadcasting Cor-
poration) Attn. - Robin White (then in charge of the program Fo-
cus on Africa) via Nairobi office through Joseph Warungu (then
the East Africa Chief Bureau), who now has replaced Robin White.
After six months, I was told that the project was excellent and
accepted by Robin, but BBC calendar was so full. Joseph then en-
couraged me to do it locally. Why BBC? This was in order to col-
lect poems from different parts of Africa. Well, I was thinking
too big!
Since this was not possible, it then had to be done on local ra-
dio in Kenya, in collaboration with Metro FM and sponsored by
UNICEF and other local organizations late in 2000. Over 3,000 po-
ems were received from all over Kenya. It is also important to
inform you that criteria were set to write a poem. For example,
age brackets (10-25 years) among others. The response was so
good! Two hundred good poems were carefully selected on merit to
make this book a reality. But this book (168 pages in total) had
to wait from 2000 to 2003 for publication: why? No funds avail-
able. Thanks to UNICEF for the grant for this initial print. It
is a good book, to give horizontal education on HIV/AID instead
of vertical. In Africa parents find some subjects "TABOO" and
prefer not discuss with their children thus making the situation
difficult.
I hope it will circulate in all Africa to meet its target and
also the rest of the world where HIV/AIDS is a major concern. It
is also my sincere hope that other versions will be made avail-
able (French, Spanish, etc...) for the non-English speaking coun-
tries in Africa (if funds available).
Let me conclude by what the Senegalese President said: "Time to
act is now, tomorrow it will be too late".
Kindest regards,
Ruku Oyaku Bhileni, Bsc (Hons), MD, M.Med (Obs-Gyn)
mailto:bhileni@yahoo.co.uk
P.S. Sorry to talk about myself but this was meant to give you a
holistic idea and approach of the book.
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