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The 20th anniversary of the HIV/AIDS project of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN) in Kenya’s Catholic Diocese of Nakuru on Friday, January 26 was marked with the caution that cases of HIV infections are on the rise in the East African nation.
Close to 14,000 people have benefitted from ASN Upendo Village, a HIV and AIDS project started by the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN) 20 years ago to provide support to people living with HIV in low-end settlements around Naivasha in Kenya’s Catholic Diocese of Nakuru.
Sr. Marie Therese Gacambi lived true to the values of her model Mother Mary in the way she encouraged deep reflection, humility, and obedience to Jesus among members of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN) in Kenya, where she was the first African Superior General.
Little can be found in the public domain about the man behind the most thriving schools, hospitals and Catholic Missions in Kenya’s Archdiocese of Nairobi and the surrounding Dioceses.
Sr. Florence Muia, a member of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN), recalls a day, in 2004, when she sat with a group of people that lived with HIV under a tree in Naivasha in the Catholic Diocese of Nakuru, just under 100 kilometers northwest of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi.
At a one-roomed house in Satellite, an informal settlement located outside Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, a 23-year-old girl living with disability claps her hands excitedly and throws herself freely at Sr. Rose Catherine Wakibiru, a Kenyan nun who has been visiting girls living with disability at their homes since the Kenyan government directed closure of all learning institutions last month.
For two consecutive Sundays in October 2020, Sr. Agnes Mwongela, accompanied by the only Priest at St. Croix Catholic Parish in Jamaica’s Diocese of Mandeville went to one of the outstations of the parish and found no one there.
At an expansive portion of land in a rural suburb of Limuru in Kenya’s Kiambu County in the Archdiocese of Nairobi, sits Limuru Cheshire Home, a charitable institution for girls living with physical and intellectual disabilities.
For close to a year, Sr. Elizabeth Gathoni of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN) has observed immense transformation in the lives of HIV patients who belong to a support group that the nun coordinates in the Catholic Diocese of Mandeville in the Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica.
Love reigns at Upendo Village, a state-of-the-art facility where people living with HIV in low-end settlements around Naivasha in Kenya’s Catholic Diocese of Nakuru (CDN) have found hope for nearly two decades – Upendo is a Swahili word for love.