Circling ‘The Scourge’

The AIDS pandemic has crippled schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, a teachers’ union initiative is trying to help heal the education system.

Meru, Kenya

Lucy Barimbui is resolved to meet with the HIV-infected teachers—even when it means returning about 30 miles along a stretch of bone-shaking road that she has already traveled twice in three days.

Barimbui, who coordinates anti-AIDS education activities for the Kenya National Union of Teachers, plied her cellphone for hours trying to convene the meeting here. But as she jounced along in the union’s white van, losing phone service as often as finding it on the river-gouged foothills of Mount Kenya, about four hours north of Nairobi, she learned that while transportation cost is a problem for the teachers, fear is a bigger one.

True, they had taken the unusual step of publicly identifying themselves with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, for which there is no immunization or cure. But they were not ready to be seen in Meru, the regional market town where more of them are known, let alone use the Meru offices of...