Taking pride in purity

Africa | Uganda’s pro-abstinence campaigners launch a World AIDS Day campaign all their own | Mindy Belz

KAMPALA— It's Thursday afternoon and early-season rains have come. Students at London College should be indoors and in class but instead several thousand are outside filling the campus with chants and cheers, dancing to a live performance by reggae gospel artist Papa San.

Astounding Westerners committed to condom distribution, the students have come to celebrate abstinence before marriage and faithfulness within marriage—a part of Uganda's AIDS treatment success more often up for ridicule than for applause and break-dancing. It's rarely the sort of cause to draw a weekday crowd—but as speakers step to the microphone and the band plays on, even principal K.L.S. Mukiibi at one point joins in the dancing, crying "Abstinence Now!"