In some African countries, HIV and AIDS are growing fastest among married couples, said Nema Aluku, the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee’s HIV and AIDS response coordinator for Eastern and Southern Africa.

Why is that? she recently asked a room filled with Christian Reformed Church employees who work in the Grand Rapids, Michigan office of the CRC.

When no one offered an answer, Aluku said, "We don’t ask one another because the assumption is that our spouse is supposedly faithful."

Besides that, says Aluku, many married couples consider HIV and AIDS to be an an illness that mostly infects single men or women who are sexually promiscuous. Unfortunately, she says, married couples hold sexual and behavioral stereotypes — and these stereotypes can cause serious problems in a marriage.

"We often judge and label others without knowing, or admitting, the labels we have ourselves," she said. "We are in denial and don't talk about our hopes and fears. We don’t talk about our body parts or our sexuality."

Last year year there were about 130,000 newly infected people with HIV in Uganda. This year, the number will likely be about 150,000. And many of those infected “are married and Christians,” said Aluku.

Aluku was giving the CRWRC employees a crash course on "Stepping Stones," the award-winning training package on HIV and AIDS, gender issues, communication and relationship skills that she uses in her work in Africa.

When presented in Africa, Stepping Stones takes people up to six months to go through.

Stepping Stones consists of a 240-page manual for trainers, and an accompanying workshop video of 15, five-minute clips. Generally, it takes her 60 hours of workshop sessions to train trainers to use the Stepping Stones program among people in their villages or communities.

"The workshop aims to engage and enable individuals, their peers and their communities to change their behaviour – individually and together – through the ‘stepping stones’ which the various sessions provide," she said.

"It is designed to enable women and men of all ages to explore their social, sexual and psychological needs, to analyse the communication blocks they face, and to practice different ways of behaving in their relationships."

During the session in Grand Rapids, Aluku led people through a few exercises, similar to ones she uses with groups in Africa.

"We try to open up space for dialogue on diffuclt subjects," she said. "We help people answer these questions for themselves, 'Who do you listen to?’ and ‘Who do you trust?'" One goal is to encourage people to ask Jesus Christ to walk beside them in times of trial and difficulty.

In one exercise, Aluku tied a blindfold tight on one volunteer and asked another volunteer to guide the blindedfolded person along a path to a chair placed at the other end of the room.

Hands in front of her, the woman with the blindfold walked slowly and tentatively, having to trust the other person to guide her to her destination.

Then Aluku had all the people in the room mingle and, in a few short minutes, strike up conversations and try to get to connect with people they didn’t know very well.

Finally, she had a group of people make a circle and asked individuals to step into the center and fall backwards, assuming someone would break the fall.

All of the excerises focused on trying to build a quick bond of trust between those employees who had come to hear Aluku speak about Stepping Stones.

"We work with issues that the people themselves identify. The sessions that we hold can be intense, since these are deep issues people are addressing," she said.

~ Chris Meehan, CRC Communications