KENYA: Friday night is party night!

[This report is the second in a series of five special features produced by IRIN's PlusNews service to coincide with the UN General Assembly's Special Session on HIV/AIDS from 25-27 June]

NAIROBI, 25 June (IRIN) - It's six p.m. and Jacinta Kalekye is already busy tending to customers at the Stage View Pub and "lodging house" in Nairobi's sprawling Kibera slums. Her charm is evident as she greets each new customer by name. It will be a long night for her, today being a Friday.

At some point in the night some of the now sober customers will try to offer to spend the night with Jacinta for some money, not that she will accompany any. In her first year as a bar tender Jacinta, 26, has seen first hand the devastating effects of AIDS, responsible for the deaths of some 500 Kenyans each day.

"Some of these people will tell you how they can make your life better, maybe by starting a business for you or even offer to get you a better paying job. Some women have fallen for this trick for a night of passion and only end up getting this new disease," said Jacinta in the local Kiswahili language.

After seeing a number of customers and even friends fall sick, Jacinta is taking no chances. "What is important in this era of AIDS is to have one faithful partner and stick to him. Multiple boyfriends is a sure way of contracting AIDS," the mother of two said.

But not everyone seems as keen on protecting themselves as Jacinta. From time to time, young girls barely in their teens come to the pub, get drunk and become vulnerable to the older men who accompany them. Jacinta narrated a recent incident when a married man walked into the bar with a girl who by the end of their drinking spree was unable to walk. "The man had to carry her on his back to the lodging room." She later learnt that the girl was still in school.

The issue of using condoms remains a touchy one in Kenya, if the patrons of the Stage View are any gauge. Amid the background of Congolese musician Koffi Olomide's "Ndombolo" beat, some of the men in the bar swear they would never touch them. They trot out the tired old cliché that condoms are like "eating sweets with the wrapper on".

Jacinta has tales of partners ending up in the rooms upstairs, only to disagree over the use of condoms. "Mostly it is the women who insist on using condoms. When they go to the rooms the men can agree to use it, but sometimes cleverly remove the condom," she said.

Elsewhere, across the city at Monte Carlo, a downtown reggae spot, the mood is upbeat. The club is packed and the dance floor heaving, with nearly everyone chewing "khat" - a mild stimulant used widely in the region. For many, this is just the place to be.

But it is not just mindless revelry on offer at Monte Carlo. DJ Snagga Puss also has a message to impart. He is aware of the hard facts: that some 2.5 million Kenyans are already HIV-positive, the majority of them below the age of 20, making the youth the worst hit group in Kenya. And he takes every opportunity on the mic to warn the crowd of the threat of the pandemic.

As Bob Marley's 'One Love' anthem sang out and the dance floor responded, Snagga took the mic. His opening line: "You cannot enter a boxing ring without donning gloves. Why do you then go to bed without wearing a condom?" The crowd roared back its approval.

Snagga, who quit school to become a DJ, said he turned into a passionate anti-AIDS evangelist after seeing patrons and four colleagues contract the disease in the six years he has worked at the club. "I cannot lie to these young people. AIDS is a reality and that is why every time I take the microphone I have to tell them not to play around with their lives," he told IRIN. "But not all are heeding the warning and are continuing with their carefree lifestyles."

He admitted that as a 23-year-old DJ, it's not always easy to practice what you preach. Young girls just out of school flock to the reggae joints as a symbol of their new-found freedom, and the first thing they do is to fall in love with the DJs. "Most of these girls idolise us when they are still in school. When they get the chance to come to the club they see us as stars and they are ready to do anything to impress us. We competed among ourselves in the number of girlfriends we could have," Snagga said. "They come here with a lot of fire under their bellies and before long they leave the reggae circuit with babies."

Snagga's solution is to get married to avoid the temptation: "I want to raise a family now because it seems nowadays it is hard to live beyond thirty years."

Chrispo Otieno, another DJ going by the nom de guerre of Ras Briggy believes almost everyone in Kenya knows about AIDS and how it should be prevented, but blamed the spread of HIV on alcohol and drug abuse. "People usually come here and for the first one hour or two they are concentrating on their beer. But when the alcohol takes full effect they loosen up. Everything they know about AIDS disappears at that point," he told IRIN. "At times people have this mistaken belief that you cannot get AIDS if you have sex with someone for just once. They later learn with regret the foolishness of their action," said the father of two.

Those sorts of attitudes - guaranteeing the proliferation of HIV - are shared by Bernard Nzioki. A BA student at the University of Nairobi, his fatalistic assessment is that little can be done about AIDS. "Getting AIDS is just like any other disease or an accident. You can't know when you are going to die. If it is planned that I will die of AIDS, then so be it," he told IRIN.

Despite the spread of HIV among the youth, the Kenyan government is yet to put in place programmes that target this most vulnerable of groups. Discussions between the ministry of education, religious leaders and parents to introduce sex education in schools to reinforce the safer sex message have stumbled. Churches, fearing that sex education would "corrupt", have opposed the much-talked about initiative.

"It should be noted that the success of the campaign against HIV/AIDS will be as a result of as many people as possible talking about the epidemic." That's the advise of James Angoye, who heads the Youth in Action Beyond 2000, a new anti-AIDS group. "There should be no limits as to how many people should be involved in this campaign."