Identity These many great feathers have not been perched on ISHTAR MSM’s feather without dirt and filth glaring on other garments on her body. One of the greatest criticism that ISHTAR MSM has been facing has been facing is that of non participatory leadership, lack of creativity in programming, misplaced targets and poor planning and also lack of researched or documented scientific HIV data that can be cited from their 15 years of service. Since 2007 to the present, ISHTAR MSM has never changed guard or had any credible elections. It is a chosen few who attend international conferences ‘to do sex work’, the same few who for five years have been controlling funds and programmes, the same few who have refused to see sense in passing on the mantle and allowing fresh ideas to challenge their old stifled programmatic approaches and methodologies. The same few who will read this and loathe with self righteousness and vain anger and pride which is costing the movement sloth and cancerous tumors. While it purports to work with all MSM including sex workers, ISHTAR MSM only paved into sex workers programming only in 2010 when the National Organization of Peer Educators (NOPE) requested to partner with them with money, jobs and clinics in the package (these clinics have now closed leaving ISHTAR MSM stranded again). No self drive was there before to reach out to sex workers. ISHTAR MSM had been a group of middle class gay activists who traveled across continents to fully paid conferences on HIV and went to fancy meetings with donors and civil society in cozy resorts to discuss HIV AIDS. Somehow, they had managed to throw in the MSM name long enough for someone to take them seriously. Anyway, that was in 2007 and there was hardly any organized LGBTI group and ISHTAR MSM being the eldest girl, she got all the eyes. ISHTAR MSM must apologize to all those MSM sex workers who got infected with HIV during the period it neglected them despite pleas from them. In the inverse of this argument is criticism that ISHTAR MSM has such a low attention span that it cannot now see that self identifying gays and bisexuals are excluded by the outreach programmes of ISHTAR MSM which only target sex workers. In short, they have targeted sex workers so much that the young gay man in Embakasi who does not engage in sex work is no longer a priority of ISHTAR MSM. The programmatic genius of ISHTAR MSM is also wanting. For longer than five years now, it has been a repetition of the same programmes without any documentation or evidence of impact. While ISHTAR MSM has numbers of patients - which are outputs, ISHTAR MSM cannot tell how their work has impacted on the MSM and sex workers they serve. It short, ‘ISHTAR MSM is a they have no evidence of results. No mechagroup of middle class nisms to follow up on their clients or monitor and evaluate prevalence rates and encourage gay activists who behavioral rated risk reductions such as numtravel across ber of partners and fidelity. It was the first continents to fully former General Manager of GALCK who accused ISHTAR MSM of archaically sticking paid conferences on to biomedical interventions in isolation and HIV and go to fancy perpetuating promiscuity in its ‘sexual profilmeetings with donors ing’ test clubs! The same Manager termed these Post Test Clubs as ‘pleasure clubs.’ A and civil society in statement that now bears perfect validity without any credible evidence of reduction in HIV infections or cozy resorts to discuss risk reduction!
HIV AIDS’ While this pen does not command to be always right, it knows sure as day, that it is a crime so monstrous to be charged with telling our 18 year old gay hotties that bareback will kill you with HIV, yet we have chosen to soak in saunas abroad and sit in the office and chat hook ups on Facebok when MSMs in Meru and Garissa are using black motor oil to lubricate their condoms. We are busy sitting in clinics waiting for young men to walk in to be tested long after ignorant exposure. Where is the targeted and specific outreach to the ignorant young gay men who are not sex workers? My crystal ball tells me that despite all these stains, ISHTAR MSM will one day scandalize the nation with billboards and media adverts with a simple message that ‘Ukifanya mapenzi bila kinga na mwanamume ama mwanamuke, bado uko hatarini ya kuambukizwa virusi vya ukimwi, jikinge.’ (Whether you have sex with a man or a woman, you are at risk of HIV Infection, protect yourself… blah blah blah). ISHTAR MSM has immense potential to roll out in unreached areas within Kenya, become creative and start other targeted new programmes to pass on the prevention message and have such a monumental impact in the HIV and AIDS/ LGBTI history in this country. All these depend on whether the board and secretariat of ISHTAR MSM will heed wise counsel in the critique herein or shall walk off as hot heads. Be that as it may, they score below average of 3.2 out of a perfect score of 10. The next edition looks at Gay Kenya Trust.—QUEER WATCHTOWER