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.
