A decade ago, Kenya saw a widespread 'Tumechill' campaign, which included the slogan and a two-finger sign. This campaign aimed to promote abstinence as a way to cope with the HIV/AIDS pandemic affecting Kenya and Africa.
The campaign was highly visible through various mediums like TV commercials, newspaper ads, radio commercials, and billboards. One of these ads featured Edith Kimani, who would later become a news anchor at KTN and is now working with Germany's Deutsche Welle.
Edith Kimani shared a newspaper clipping from 2003 on social media, which her mother had kept. She captioned it,
#TBT oh my Africa! That one time circa 2003 when I was in an abstinence campaign. The money for countering the HIV pandemic in Africa was being pumped freely - former president Bush had just founded the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) – and with it came 5 billion dollars and a caveat: 20% of the money had to go to abstinence-focused programs. So there I was, promising abstinence on TV and in the papers (that’s an actual newspaper clipping my mum kept) because he who pays the piper calls the tune. #TBT #MyAfrica
The recovered account cited reporting by Nairobi Wire.
