I got the sense that people were in general very polite, though it may have been because Americans and Europeans who can afford to go to Kenya wield more economic power than most Kenyans.

Obviously the cure for ignorance is always education. That's why education is usually an important part of prevention strategies, and since prevention generally works well as part of a course of treatment, education also does.

I wish it were as simple as that.

Yes you're right, it DOES start with education, prevent and then safe sex.

But I doubt if they even know what condoms are over there.

And just like a drug addict or an aloholic, an AIDS-infected parent poses a dangerous tragic threar to unborn children and THEY ALSO are the ones who end up suffering because most of them may never make it past childhood.

It's not so much that they don't know what condoms are, it's that there's a lot of FUD surrounding condoms.

That's one of the biggest hurdles to overcome: at least in the Kisumu area, it's simply common knowledge that white people lace condoms with HIV, in the same way that it's simply common knowledge in some circles that we never went to the moon.

What it boils down to is: if you trust people who don't know better over people who do, you end up with bad information. Undoing the stigmas against condoms is going to take a more interesting approach than just "let's tell them to use condoms and just say that it's okay" because, guess what, that's nothing they haven't heard a thousand times over in Kisumu and they still don't believe it.

What is FUD?

Sorry. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It's misinformation.

Apparently we have people here that believe their own government has injected people with HIV. It's not like only Africa has these kinds of "FUD" problems. There its things like tribalism, here its things like self-segregation, anti-intellectualism, and victimology.

Anyway, you hit on the key point - the solution is something money can't buy. Money can buy some half-assed band aids but it can't solve the root of the problem. Money doesn't solve the problems in this country (for those who don't have enough of it, can't hold on to it, and can't earn it) and its not going to solve the problems there. Treat? Yeah, somewhat. Solve? No.

It's not that I have any of that against them, but I think the gov't over there should get involved, if they aren't already, and
start trying to offer programs that would make them more aware of this deadly disease.

There is a correlation between industrialized, economically successful countries, a good education system, and relatively intelligent people (compared to those in Africa, for example). You can even see this in the US; we have a horrible primary education system and also a pretty stupid population. The previous generations competed well with the rest of the world but with half of all students dropping out or not going to college we're starting to suffer the effects of a dumber population. Any half-learned economist can predict that the US will keep falling behind because our younger generations aren't educated. We do have some of the best universities though on the planet, but even this is changing as our colleges are heading towards being "easy" and more colleges are being established elsewhere. Education is pretty important. We shouldn't be letting this happen. Education, gas prices, personality-based politics, the war, and all the stupid bills that have been passed are causes us problems (eg the Patriot Act which is hurting the US IT industry, an industry that has historically been one of the most profitable in the world. People are going to Canada anymore it seems for IT.).Microsoft.