HIV/AIDS

In my undergrad I took a fascinating course on African politics with a brilliant Nigerian professor. He loved my first paper and thought I was a genius (which was great for my ego!) Then I wrote my second paper - on AIDS in Africa. I did a lot of research and tried to cover as many "aspects" as possible. He didn't even mark it and returned it to me with the comment, "see me after class." So I did, and he said he was shocked and disappointed to read my section on behaviour patterns that promote the spread of HIV. I had written about the mines in South Africa - how migrant men were kept alone for months/years working in the mines without seeing their families and the availability of prostitutes and then the men bringing HIV back to their families. I had written about the dangers of truck drivers carrying HIV within and across borders. And many other examples. In my essay I covered the massive effect of poverty on HIV and the role of the West, but I also wrote about how Africans could change behaviour patterns to lower the risk. My professor called me racist and a huge disappointment, since he had thought I was so promising. I was crushed. A person like me finds the "racist" label pretty hard to swallow.

Now I'm an HIV/AIDS Coordinator living and working in Zimbabwe. Of course I'm still very young in this field, and still a visitor in this country. I'm very far from being an expert on anything, but I've had the opportunity to be in many forums on HIV and I've had open ears and eyes. I still believe that the West's failure to help and extreme poverty are huge instigators for HIV, but I can't dismiss behaviour change either. I've heard some frightening stories - like the sex worker who was sexually abused as a child and later raped and infected by a family member. She took on her profession as revenge - to try to infect as many men as possible. Or the truck driver who keeps himself "safe" by only sleeping with married women along his routes. He picks them up and makes them pay for their "lifts" with sex - often in front of her children who are with her. Many people in the church still promote the idea that condoms are evil/sinful or that if a wife requests her husband to wear one, it's because she is being unfaithful herself. I've blogged before about the persistent belief that men simply cannot control themselves sexually, and therefore if they are dissatisfied at home, they have the right to go find other women to meet their needs. Then there's polygamy... I'm a liberal. I'm used to blaming the West for everything. But some of these practices aren't that helpful! We ALL have a responsibility to ensure that millions of people on this continent stop dying so unnecessarily.