A Circle of Strength

The Ujima group, which meets weekly in Southeast Washington, has been described by AIDS workers as the only one of its kind in D.C. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

If they are fortunate, Gary Isler knocks on their door.

For more than a year, Isler has worked as an outreach coordinator for Family and Medical Counseling Service Inc. When HIV-positive inmates are released from the D.C. jail, it is Isler's job to make sure they get medical help if they want it.

Sometimes they don't. Sometimes, it's too late. By the time Isler reached one guy this summer, the man was using illegal drugs again. Four others were back behind bars. Another prospective client relapsed, ended up in a nursing home and died.

The stories haunt him.

A man needs more than medicine to heal, Isler says. Which is why he started the project and called it Ujima, also known as the Courage to Change group.

In Swahili, "ujima" means "collective responsibility."

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Just getting to the weekly meeting -- on the second floor of an office building at 2041 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. -- is an accomplishment.

Lee, who has spent nearly half his life behind bars, usually arrives first. He and Isler go way back, to when they were locked up in neighboring buildings in the now-defunct Lorton prison complex in Virginia. Lee's four kids, ages 12 to 27, don't know he's HIV-positive, he says.

Kevin Robinson is usually the second to show. In a bad drug deal 10 years ago, he got whacked in the head with a baseball bat and was pronounced dead at the hospital, he says. Except that he wasn't. Three years later, he contracted HIV.

Russell is a chatty, barrel-chested sports fanatic who'll talk field goals and three-pointers to anyone who'll listen.

Often the guy who's listening most intently is Stanley Richmond. He's so good at listening that the others sometimes wonder if he talks at all.