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Lack of HIV Prevention Services for the Displaced
The power of education in fostering a better and effective response to HIV and AIDS is undeniable.
Education promotes knowledge and with knowledge about HIV and AIDS, individuals, families and communities have the ability to make informed choices about their behavior.
However, governments and international donor organizations often underplay this important intervention, particularly in the emergency phase of the cycle of displacement, says a report recently issued by UNHCR and UNESCO on the importance of education to populations that find themselves victims of displacement due to conflict, disaster or other emergencies.
Education can play a key role in helping refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) cope with the negative excesses of their circumstances, such as ignorance, exploitation, violence and the risk of HIV infection.
Many factors combine to put IDPs and refugees at the risk of HIV infection, including loss of livelihoods, lack of access to basic services, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and violence. Read the rest of this entry »
Governments should apologize for human rights abuse
In spite of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations 60 years ago, governments throughout the world continue to violate human rights with impunity.
Amnesty International reports that restless, angry and disillusioned, people will not remain silent if the gap continues to widen between their demand for equality and their governments’ denial.
As it is, governments have exhibited more interest in the abuse of power or in the pursuit of political self-interest, than in respecting the rights of those they lead.
US, the world’s most powerful state, has distinguished itself in recent years through a disregard of human rights thereby setting a bad example for other countries.
In fact, US’ disregard for human rights has resulted in the emergence of both leaders and movements in many parts of the world that abuse human rights.
“The human rights flashpoints in Darfur, Zimbabwe, Gaza, Iraq and Myanmar demand immediate action,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“Injustice, inequality and impunity are the hallmarks of our world today. Governments must act now to close the yawning gap between promise and performance,” she added. Read the rest of this entry »
A Question of the Cutting Edge: Male Circumcision & HIV
Male circumcision (removal of the foreskin of the male penis) is increasingly gaining currency as an alternative method to reduce HIV-infection. In sub-Saharan Africa, the worst affected region in the world, male circumcision (MC) could prevent six million new infections, researchers say.
In fact, evidence from observational studies in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that circumcised men have a lower risk of acquiring HIV infection than uncircumcised men. A study in South Africa showed that male circumcision might reduce by about 60% the risk of men contracting HIV through sexual intercourse with women. The study focused on 3,000 HIV-negative, uncircumcised men ages 18 to 24 living in a South African township. Of these, half were randomly selected for circumcision while the other half remained uncircumcised and served as a control group.
For every 10 uncircumcised men who contracted HIV, about three circumcised men contracted the virus. Researchers believed the findings were so significant they deemed it was unethical to proceed without offering the option to all males in the study.
The argument is that the inner surface of the foreskin contains Langerhans celles, which have HIV receptors, and is also vulnerable to traumatic epithelial disruptions during intercourse. Second, an intact foreskin exposes a man to a greater risk of ulcerative sexually transmitted infections, which in themselves are a risk factor for HIV acquisition. Furthermore, the virus’ chances of survival might be higher in a warm, wet environment like the one under the foreskin. Read the rest of this entry »
Escaping cholera in Chitungwiza
AMID THE SEVERE cholera outbreak, I visited my cousin late last month in the sprawling high-density suburb of Chitungwiza, thirty kilometres out of Harare. Even though I had been taking precautions to avoid cholera, I badly wanted to see my cousin and so I brushed aside the increased risk of being exposed to the disease.
Zimbabwe’s recent cholera outbreak is the worst in the country’s history. It has claimed nearly 2500 lives and affected over 30,000 people. To make matters worse, the government of Zimbabwe has described the outbreak as a “genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.” It has done little to ensure an effective response to the disease and has covered up the extent of the epidemic.
I found myself skipping over the raw sewage flowing in a trench outside my cousin’s house, amid a stench that filled the atmosphere. I wasn’t really surprised by the flow of sewage – after all, to get to my cousin’s house I had skipped over many other streams of thick grey water – and no one else seemed to care about the sewage as they went about their daily business. In Chitungwiza, as in many other parts of Zimbabwe, the sewerage and water supply systems have collapsed, putting the entire population at risk of cholera. Uncollected garbage has become the norm and people have taken to using makeshift dumping sites. Read the rest of this entry »
The lights of my life
Every year, when Christmas time comes, the Harare City Council puts up multicoloured lights in First Street, the city’s main road. The lights glow brilliantly like rainbow colours in the dark.
When the lights went up in late November, I was busy running around the city in search of my baby son Tadana’s three-month immunisation jab. As I criss-crossed the city and passed through First Street, I couldn’t help but think that the Christmas lights were a big, tasteless joke given the circumstances in Zimbabwe.
Every day, early in the morning till late into the night, hordes of men and women huddled beneath the lights, waiting and hoping like little Godots to get at their hard-earned cash locked up in banks. Money was in short supply, and once you managed to withdraw some cash it flew away with the wind because of unquantifiable inflation. Perhaps as a sign of their dejection, the people would leave loads of trash below the Christmas lights, turning Harare’s main street into a mess.
I don’t think many of the people waiting in bank queues that stretched like garden worms around the city gave much thought to the Christmas lights. I am sure, for many long-suffering Zimbabweans, the idea of Christmas faded into nothingness under the daily pressure to satisfy temporal necessities.
Anyway, as the Christmas lights blinked away, my wife Michelle and I took baby Tadana to a local clinic, about 3km from where we live. We were shocked to find that were no nurses except for an old lady at the front desk. She informed us that the clinic had no stock of vaccines, and that we had to make our own plan to get baby Tadana vaccinated.
I knew that this meant Michelle and I had to run like dogs until the vaccines were found. Thoroughly dumbfounded, we went home splitting our heads on what to do next. We thought of travelling to South Africa, Botswana or Zambia to find the vaccines but we had no cash.
But as they say in Zimbabwe, you have to make a plan, and then shift it to the left and the right and squeeze it until it is bone dry to make the impossible work. Michelle summoned the mother inside herself and spent one morning at work calling her friends with babies.
Luckily, she was given the names of paediatricians who are filling in the gap left by a public health system that has failed to deliver services to its own people. We contacted one of the paediatricians and for US$2 we managed to get baby Tadana his jab.
I couldn’t help but think about what is happening to millions of children in Zimbabwe born in our season of despair, particularly in the rural areas. Unlike baby Tadana, many children in my country are not receiving essential vaccinations because of the collapse of the public health system.
It’s like a whirlwind that will undoubtedly explode in the coming years: we will surely witness a rise in children’s diseases in my country, and my spirit stings with pain at the thought.
Soon after baby Tadana received his jab, which made him bawl madly, we took him on his longest journey in the human world — to Mutare, approximately 265km from Harare. It’s Zimbabwe’s third largest city, located in the eastern highlands and notorious for the nouveau riche flaunting loads of cash made from blood diamonds.
In recent years, thousands and thousands of Zimbabweans have flocked to Chiadzwa, a rural compound a few kilometres outside Mutare, to try their luck at searching for diamonds. The blood diamonds have made many people in the country get rich quickly while many others have lost their lives.
We arrived in Mutare at night after driving non-stop for nearly three hours. From the top of Christmas Pass, which provides a panoramic view of the city, Mutare’s multicoloured lights look like a splatter of Christmas crackers in the dark.
Michelle, Tadana and I were in Mutare for a clean-up campaign to sweep trash off the city’s streets with a group of young people who live in the city, as part of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence. The young people were members of Youth Initiative for Democracy in Zimbabwe, a youth organisation committed to a free, democratic and just Zimbabwe.
Michelle asked me to join so that I would look after baby Tadana while she coordinated the clean-up activities. As I carried him around Mutare city centre, I was amazed at the many stares that came our way from both men and women.
There is a general stereotype that African men should not be seen in public carrying tiny babies. It is regarded as a European thing for an African man to carry a baby. I guess the stereotype is that men are just supposed to provide the baby’s material needs while the emotional, soft, lovey-dovey stuff should be solely the domain of women.
Whatever the case, carrying Tadana around gave me the closest sensation to being pregnant that I think I could ever muster. To my satisfaction, Tadana never cried. The way I see it, men need to claim the space of fatherhood and show warmth, love and affection to their children.
When Tadana was born three months ago, I could never have predicted the script that has played out so far. The journey from the pregnancy through to the birth and first earthly months of baby Tadana has been mercurial, jagged, rolling and full of new things that I daresay my creative imagination could never conjecture.
In sum, it’s been a journey with all sorts of unpredictable twists and turns, much like my home country’s political and socioeconomic landscape.
As we drove up towards Christmas Pass, on our way back to Harare after being in Mutare for 24 hours, baby Tadana began babbling many sounds more than he has done in the past. On our parenthood journey, Michelle and I eagerly look forward to the day when baby Tadana will speak his first actual words.
But we make it a point to thoroughly cherish and embrace each moment with our little bundle of joy. All said, when next Christmas comes, baby Tadana will surely have much to talk about.
Baby love in the time of cholera
Amid a horrific outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe, my baby son Tadana’s first genuine smile marked a major turning point and came as a welcome reward after the sleepless nights and erratic days we experienced during his first weeks. If I had it in my power I would keep those winning, toothless grins coming all day.
I confess: never in my life did I expect to celebrate my baby’s first smile in a time of cholera. But living in Zimbabwe today, anything goes — nothing is impossible in the country of my birth.
In the past when Tadana smiled, my wife Michelle and I were quick to ululate and exchange notes and comments on their quality and meaning. However, we soon discovered that it was not baby smiles, just Tadana exercising his facial muscles.
But at 10 weeks old Tadana transmuted into a social butterfly; he broke out of his cocoon, so to speak, and began beaming toothless baby smiles that sent waves of love into our life.
While we were wallowing under the glow of Tadana’s smiles, which were as bright as an ancient African sun, our jagged senses were brought back to Zimbabwe’s harsh reality by the cholera outbreak.
The outbreak, of epidemic levels and one of the worst in Zimbabwe’s history, exploded across Harare and other parts of the country and quickly became a major topic of conversation.
So as Tadana showered Michelle and me with his first social smiles, the threat of cholera zinged in our heads like an old greenfly.
Tap water in Harare started to produce black, flaky substances and foamed when brought to boil, increasing our fears of the killer pathogen. But through it all, Tadana smiled innocently and gave us hope and the strength to cope.
Even before Tadana was born, we knew about the bad quality of our water supply. We knew, for example, that because of the prevailing difficult socio-economic circumstances in Zimbabwe, little chlorine was being applied to treat our water.
As a result, Michelle and I made a bold decision to give Tadana bottled water only. I know that for many Zimbabwean parents with newborns the idea of buying bottled water in a place of multi-billion percent inflation is a luxury they can’t afford. So they have little choice but to give their babies tap water.
Michelle and I drink boiled tap water and the constant threat of cholera has made us extra careful about the source of our household food. But Tadana smiles through it all and becomes more responsive to our presence.
Because he can now turn his head at an angle, he makes an effort to aim wide smiles at anyone within his vicinity and then gurgles to catch attention. Other times he will wait for you to smile before beaming back an enthusiastic response. Tadana’s body, legs and arms wriggle about and take part in the smiling act.
Thus amid horror stories of people dying of cholera at poorly manned public health institutions, every time I get home Tadana’s rhythmic grins are like music that soothe my soul of the manifold happenings in our bedlam called Zimbabwe.
One evening after work I got home feeling tired and frustrated from running about the city in search of a quick US dollar deal, but when I held Tadana in my arms and he gave me his classic grin, I felt a sense of warm, if momentary, relief.
I was immediately transported into a metaphysical zone where Tadana and I connected and spoke to each other in muted tones about dreams of a new Zimbabwe that is bold enough to take care of its own sons and daughters.
Each time I embrace Tadana, it’s difficult for me to push thoughts about my country into the far recesses of the collective national mentality where I believe that owing to the junk that now exists there, cholera pathogens can certainly find room to grow, fester and take away the lives of our people.
Every day I say a prayer on behalf of all the children of Zimbabwe living in conditions overflowing with garbage and raw sewage all because of a collective failure of leadership.
While our politicians wine and dine under soft lights and engage in endless chatter in five-star hotels, Michelle and I, like many other Zimbabwean parents, strive by God’s grace to raise a new generation of Zimbabweans that hopefully will not repeat the multitude of errors of our present corruption.
And, of course, the first genuine smiles that Tadana has been dishing out like confetti have been but one of the most heartwarming milestones in our parenthood journey thus far.
A kind of freedom in Zimbabwe’s queues
AT FIVE IN THE MORNING I woke up with the image of a long human queue in the back of my mind. A friend had sent me some money from overseas, and in order to get access to it I had to be the proverbial “early bird” in order to be the first in the queue at the bank.
As I roused myself from sleep I thought with sober sadness how long I would have to stand in the queue to get my money. I would have to queue for at least three hours before getting served. Standing in queues that appear like mushrooms everyday in Harare has taught me patience. I am amazed and alarmed at my capacity for waiting. The struggle to withdraw money from Zimbabwean banks feels like a ton load of ants crawling and stinging the skin. The daily withdrawal limit is less than one American dollar, barely enough to buy a loaf of bread.
Outside, birds chirped an early morning chorus, their beautiful harmony far removed from the bedlam that Zimbabwe has become. The electricity suddenly failed and I couldn’t make the cup of tea that I was so much looking forward to. Electricity cuts are a common experience in today’s Zimbabwe; we have grown so accustomed to them that we dismiss the dark reality with a flippant remark or a shrug – much like we have become accustomed to long queues and the country’s stagnant politics. Read the rest of this entry »
Zimbabwe’s Education System Endangers Students
It’s official: Zimbabwe’s educational system is now in the morgue. The state of our education system is clear testimony to how self-destructive Zimbabwe has become. In a word, Zimbabwe is structurally deficient and in a desperate need for repair and construction.
The idea that we have a generation of young people who are receiving a half-baked education is at best, preposterous, and at worst, downright mindlessly stupid.
The failure of the education sector, like many other sectors in Zimbabwe, is a mere revelation that our country is going down the tubes. And in the process, we’ve become like an alcoholic bent on hanging onto to self-suicidal behaviour.
The picture is grim, to say the least. Teachers have abandoned schools. There are no books in schools. Infrastructure is delapidated, and in the erstwhile so-called elite schools such as Prince Edward etc. standards are going to the dogs.
Students have to make do without appropriate meals in our boarding schools. In some parts of the country such as Manicaland, entire schools have been abandoned as both teachers and pupils have joined the melee to the bloody diamond fields. Read the rest of this entry »
Young Zimbabweans Face HIV Risk As Hard Times Hit
Like many young people growing up in Zimbabwe today, Linda Kuterera (not her real name) was forced to drop out of school because her mother could no longer afford the spiraling school fees.
Soon after she stopped going to school, Linda’s mother fell sick and had to be hospitalized.
“They told me to pay for my mother’s medication, and being the eldest in the family the responsibility fell on me. I hate what I am doing but I am forced to sleep with men so that I can raise money to pay for the hospital bills,” said Linda choking back tears.
Poverty has left many young girls and women with little choice but to sell their bodies in order to cope with the economic struggles and food shortages.
According to the Zimbabwe 2008 National Youth Shadow report, girls as young as 12 are being forced to sell their bodies to raise money for sustenance or just to get a day’s meals. Unfortunately, young Zimbabweans are often likely to be left out of HIV and AIDS programmes, adds report.
The report, which seeks to measure the country’s progress on the 2001 UNGASS Declaration on HIV and AIDS states that young people continue to be overlooked in the implementation of programmes. Read the rest of this entry »
Harare Hiatus
I RECENTLY KILLED a goat in the hope of selling the meat for US dollars.
Like many Zimbabweans, I have become accustomed to a culture of trying to make a quick buck to cope with the economic struggles and food shortages. Unfortunately for me, no customers came forward to buy the goat meat.
Now I am cracking my head to come up with another money-making deal that can get me American currency.
The reason is simple: my landlord wants her rent in US dollars. She says Zimbabwean dollar notes are like tissue paper and she has no need of them, so I am left with a little choice but to hassle.
Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha
