Deaf Culture in Mombasa and HIV/AIDS Education

Ten years ago a crisis was recognized by the Kenyan deaf community when it was realized that the country’s roughly 1 million deaf citizens had received little or no education about the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In Kenya, as elsewhere, the deaf population has formed a community characterized by a common, shared language and experience as a disabled population. The intracacies of this unique culture affect their interactions with the majority hearing community as they have their own customs and ways of interacting with one another that are distinct from the hearing majority. In 2004, the first VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) center for the deaf staffed by mostly deaf employees was opened in Nairobi. My study analyzes the newly conceived efforts towards HIV/AIDS education within the context of the deaf community of Mombasa