HIV/AIDS in Malawi Continued…

So, in my last update, I talked about transmissions of HIV/AIDS in Malawi. This time, I want to talk about this program I’ve been conducting with my Malawian counterpart, a healthworker from my health center (he’s named after Davie Jones! Haha)

Anyway, we decided that we wanted to present the Hope Kit to 10 villages within and around our catchment area. The Hope Kit consisted of fun activities that explain how HIV spreads, how it works in the body, why people with HIV should not be stigmatized, etc. There were many visual and physical demonstrations and we chose the ones that were most fitting for the villages. We targeted 10 villages with risk factors of cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission and/or low school attendance. We spoke to the chiefs first and invited the youth clubs, the Village AIDS Committees, and a parent from each household to attend the event.

Little did I know what we signed up for.

There are moments when you think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.” I had quite a few of those Peace Corps moments because of this program. I should’ve known that there were reasons that these villages were at risk, meaning I had to trudge through muddy roads, rain, rivers, and jungles to get to these places. We visited one village where we tried to take the short path with our bicycles but the path wasn’t meant for cycling. (It turned out that the longer path was actually faster with our bicycles too.) I kept running into the maize stalks on my bike, and I fell a couple times, especially when going down some rocks. Then we went up, up, up the hill, then down the hill, then up again, then down, then up… Then there were the rivers. Two of them. O.K., they were more like streams, but being the klutz I am, I couldn’t avoid slipping into the water. And that wasn’t my first time. I slipped in another stream going to another village. You’d think the adventure ended there, but actually… we had to cross another stream to get to our next destination. But there were no stepping stones this time. Since my socks and shoes were already wet, I was ready to walk through the stream, but the chief wouldn’t allow me, so he picked me up and carried me across! Oh man, by the end of the day, I really had to laugh because I wasn’t expecting any of it.

I don’t regret any of it, though. These villages were remote and isolated, so they were probably neglected by a lot of their community workers and NGOs. Some villages were not even assisted by NGOs, so I knew they gained much from our presentation. My initial thoughts about the presentation were that it was too juvenile and seemed somewhat repetitive to a group of people who already knew about HIV/AIDS. But my Malawian counterpart explained to me how they were actually beneficial. Our first activity, “Fleet of Hope”, involved using pictures of people (father, mother, schoolgirl, witch doctor, etc.) to tell stories in which they are “sitting” in one of the boats of the ABC - Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms – or in the water with HIV. He told me that this activity allowed people to share messages with their spouses and communities without having to confront them since Malawians are non-confrontational: “This man is a farmer and has a wife. When he comes home from the gardens, he is faithful to his wife so they don’t have to use condoms and can avoid HIV transmission.” I was somewhat amused by one man’s “This man isn’t abstaining or being faithful but he uses condoms every time!” Our last activity, “HIV in the body”, uses people to represent the white blood cell, HIV, opportunistic infections, ARV, and the ABC, and mobilizes them to show how each functions in or around the body. This was perhaps the most educational activity, as most people are uneducated and have never fully understood the works of HIV and ARVs. But I think the most satisfying part for me is the Q&A. I’m amazed at the kind of myths and misunderstandings people have, and the Q&A is the opportune moment to debunk them. (I don’t want people to think that I’ve been doing all the work; I want to credit my counterpart for doing all of the work in Chichewa. I just sit there and look pretty! haha)

Malawians are fond of meetings, but I know that this was a special kind of meeting they’ve never attended before. All the meetings I’ve attended in Malawi have been - for lack of better words - boring. People really like to hear themselves talk, so they can talk for hours on end without ever making a point. So I was not surprised to find some villagers sulking (and even looking unhappy!) when we first appeared. But by the end of each and every presentation, despite sitting for 2-3 hours, the villagers were laughing and singing. The smiles beaming from their faces and their inquiries about our next visit are all the thanks I need. These are the moments when I think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.”

Until the next Peace Corps moment,
Elaine aka “Ellen”

My Malawian counterpart and a villager sharing a story during "Fleet of Hope"

They're "greeting" (which symbolizes sexual transmission) in "Wildfire"

A woman trying to figure out if this man has HIV/AIDS or not

As for my cat...

I decided to name her "Wosaka" as in "Hunter". :)

She still has to learn to not poop and pee under my bed though...

and to live up to her name... HUNT down those rats and eat them!

It’s a vulture! It’s a toucan! It’s a…

vul-can with a mohawk?

I’m not talking about the Star Trek best known for “Beam me up, Scotty!”.

At first I thought the bird was a vulture because it was huge in size and had a neck that arched like a vulture’s. But the second time I saw it, I thought it was a toucan because it had a huge beak shaped like a toucan’s. But then I looked again closely the third time and it turned out the “beak” was actually a mohawk. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a huge bird with a mohawk. And I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but a man said that its name was “Abambobobo”. (“Abambo” means “man” or “father”.) I tried to take a picture of it when it was in my backyard, but it didn’t come out well.

Something I do want to take a good picture of, though, are the baboons. I heard there are baboons in the trees around my area (though not near my house because I don’t have trees big enough to fit them), so I told my agogo (“grandmother”) that she would have to show me one day because I’d like to take pictures! I also heard there are alligators/crocodiles (same thing!) around my area too that wander from the river to eat the chickens! And hyenas are supposedly around looking for carcasses to feast on but I have yet to see them.

None of the baboons or alliga-codiles have made an appearance in or around my house, though I’ve seen a good number of other critters. There was an ugly toad in my house that wouldn’t leave even after I chased it out with a broom. I think it wants my cat to kiss it so it can turn into a prince, because it seems to keep coming back to her water can. (All she does is meow and drink next to it. I thought cats were supposed to torture anything that’s alive and moves!) Then, there are the lizards. What can I say? They like to eat the flies and poop anywhere they please. And last but not least, the cockroaches – the reason I don’t urinate for 12 hours straight. Well, I’m pleased to announce that they’ve been annihilated! I actually mixed water with the drug that we use to treat our mosquito nets and dumped it into my “toilet”. Next thing I knew there was a diaspora of cockroaches all over my backyard! When they kept trying to come into my house, I freaked out and ran to get my agogo. By the time I came back, they were either plopped over dead or eaten by the chickens (surely they had diarrhea after their meals). But now they’re gone! I still don’t use the toilet that much at night though because of other critters, like snakes, scorpions (one bit my medical in-charge), and… well, you get the point.

Anyway, there’s a lot I want to share because I’ve been thinking a lot about… a lot. Education, HIV, gender equality, famine, genocide, prostitution, rape, witchcraft… which I can’t possibly go into all at once, so I’ll start with HIV/AIDS. I know I mentioned it briefly in some of my updates, but I wanted to go into a little more details so that hopefully you'll get a better understanding of the plight that Malawians face.

According to National AIDS Commission of Malawi, 790,000 of HIV-positive clients are 15-49 year olds, roughly 14% of the total population, and 440,000 (12%) are 14 years old and younger (the high rate’s mostly from mother-to-child-transmission). 58% of adults infected are women. About 80,000 die every year due to opportunistic infections caused by AIDS. 46% of orphans are orphaned by AIDS. The number one death of HIV clients is TB, and the number of TB cases have tripled since 1990 because of HIV/AIDS. As of 2003, my district had a confirmed number of 18,000 people infected. You can go to http://www.aidsnac.malawi.net/ for more statistics and information.

Sex is the main mode of HIV transmission in Africa, especially Malawi. Unfortunately, many of Malawi’s cultural practices involve in sexual intercourse, such as:
-Chokolo is “wife inheritance”, which is commonly practiced in Islam (a few girls were telling me that Muslim women were not allowed to refuse men when they wanted them to be their girlfriends or wives)
-Kulowa kufa is “death cleansing”, which involves hiring a man to have sex with a widow the night of her husband’s death to “cleanse” her of grief
-Chinamwali is the initiation rite for boys, which involves women (usually sex workers) for them to have sex with (the idea is that they have to be “experienced” as adults)
-Fisi is “hyena”, which is an initiation rite for girls where “fisi” is hired to have sex with the girls to remove the “dust” from her body or else they would have “unsmooth” skin
-Hlazi is the giving of a man’s sister-in-law to his brother to thank him for caring for his wife properly
-“Entering oven” happens in the more rural areas where they believe that to bake bricks well, the bakers should sleep with young girls the night they’re baking bricks
-Tattoos done by witch doctors by use of razor blades (this one’s not sexually transmission but it’s common enough to be discussed)

And there are proverbs that even encourage people to indulge in sex while they’re young, such as Mkazi sachepa (“The girl is always ripe enough”) and Okaona nyanja anaona ndi mvuu zomwe (“When one visits the lake, he/she also visits the hippos”).

The good news, however, is that since Malawi recognized HIV/AIDS in their country in 1985 and the current president allowed international aid agencies to return in recent years, there has been a good amount of education and awareness about the cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission. The most common one that’s still practiced in my catchment area is the initiation rite. Despite their awareness of how HIV can spread, some parents still believe some of the cultural myths and that they must “preserve” their culture by forcing their children to participate in the initiation rites despite their protests.

But there’s still much to be done. Now that they know how their cultural practices can transmit HIV/AIDS, there’s still a need to learn about other modes of transmissions. Apparently there are still myths and rumors going around, such as:
-Mosquitoes can transmit HIV because they suck people’s blood and insert them into other people.
-Condoms can cause cancer. (This might’ve been triggered by the onset of cancer cases when spermicide was introduced. It’s now banned.)
-A person can get HIV when a witch “magically” has sex with someone without his/her knowledge. (This one’s complicated.)
-The barber can transmit HIV because he uses the same clipper or razor to shave people’s hair. (There’s not enough blood to be transmitted through it.)
-Peanut butter is a medicine for HIV like ARVs. (It has been used as a nutrition supplement but does not directly repress HIV.)

And there are still more myths that I’m learning about on a continual basis. I know I’ve typed a lot of information here and I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll save my update about the HIV/AIDS awareness outreach for next time.

Here's a picture to entertain you:

Think it's a normal ball? Usually it'd be made of plastic bags. But when I visited a village and we inquired about the contents within it, we learned that there were condoms within the ball. Ohhhh so THAT's where all the condoms are going! (But I was also kinda disturbed where the little kids got the condoms from.)

And one last thing – I’ll be traveling to Hong Kong and touring to Egypt in May! J The thought of Chinese food, Starbucks’ caramel frappuccinos, McDonald’s apple pies and yogurt parfaits, udons and chow mein and vermicelli and NOODLES (and a good number of other items I’ve requested from America) excite me like never before! Oh, that and seeing my family of course!

P.S. I don’t know if I’ve sent my recent address out because I’ve been losing a lot of mail through the previous address, so here it is:
PO Box 74
Chilembwe, Malawi
Central Africa

And for those who inquired about calling, you can go to http://www.callingcardoutlet.com/ and get a $20 phone card for 5 hours I think. And my number’s 001-265-947-67-54.