Emotional Rainclouds and Fire Hoses

Starting on Tuesday of this past week the organization I’m working with, LENEPWHA (the Lesotho Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS), was hosting a workshop involving HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, psycho-social support, positive prevention, and palliative care. Five of the coaches from the football part of the project were included in the workshop and I thought that for the most part I would just check in to see how things were going sporadically over the week. I ended up attending the whole workshop. It worked out well. I was able to bring my English-Sesotho dictionary and used the time to improve my language skills. I also ended up being the designated photographer/videographer.

I was pretty happy with my role until the morning of the last day of the workshop. I arrived at the workshop a few minutes late. There were a couple of participants loitering outside smoking, so I just took a second to chat with them before proceeding inside the conference hall. Inside the hall the participants were standing in a circle. On the ground, In the middle of the circle was a large HIV/AIDS ribbon made out of leaves and pebbles.

In my role as photographer I started taking some pictures and video without thinking. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. It was a sharing circle - I don't know if this is the correct term, but it describes the activity fairly well.

In an earlier post (doom and gloom binge) I talked about being drawn to this type of work because of the emotions involved. Even though I’m working with an HIV/AIDS organization, with people who are HIV positive, the presence of HIV/AIDS and death seems distant. I am not sure what I expected, but at some level I must have thought that there would be this ever-present cloud of grief raining on everything. It hasn’t been that way and I think the normalcy has surprised me slightly. I would not say that people are suppressing their emotions, but similar to anywhere else there has to be some form of emotional compartmentalization for people and society to function.

If I thought there would be this emotional rain cloud in Lesotho I think the sharing circle showed me that it is actually more like a fire hose. I was in this room with about 30 other people. I was the only white guy – not really an issue because LENEPWHA are incredibly welcoming, notice the picture of me in the traditional Basotho blanket, but it makes me feel like I stand out –

I was the only person who has not been affected by HIV/AIDS, and I was the jackass holding a camera. I couldn’t completely comprehend everything, but from what I heard and what I was told later, people were talking about learning about their status, getting sick, friends and family dying, and discrimination and stigma - families disowning them, friends abandoning them, husbands throwing them out. Almost all of the participants were crying or had tears in their eyes. While telling their stories many became inconsolable – crying hysterically. A couple of minutes in and I wanted to leave that room more than I have ever wanted to leave anywhere, but I wasn’t sure if that would be offensive – as much as I felt like I stood out no one was really taking notice of me. At this moment of trying to decide if I should stay or if I should go the project manager tells me that I can go into the middle of the circle to get some better photos and video. I must have looked like he had turned a fire hose on me from a couple of feet away. I whispered ‘umm…I would not feel very comfortable doing that’. Luckily one of the local LENEPWHA staff was fine with it, so I handed the camera over to him. In retrospect I think that it would have been fine for me to jump in the middle of the circle and shove my camera in peoples’ faces, but at the time it seemed like a horrible idea.

After the activity was over it was like someone turned off the valve on the fire hydrant and everything was back to normal. People who had collapsed in tears only a few minutes earlier were now laughing, joking, and posing for pictures with the HIV ribbon made of leaves.

I can only imagine what it is like to be branded as HIV positive: marginalized, discriminated against, and stigmatized. In a sense you have to put your emotions into a compartment and lock them up. I can only imagine what this sharing circle can provide: a safe space to unlock that compartment, to share, to vent, to console, and to comfort. It was very powerful.

July 18, 2010

Don't Be Like a Pumpkin

The ABCs and Concurrent Sexual Partnerships

I just returned from a trip to Maseru. I was just there for the morning. The last couple of times I have been in Maseru I have noticed a strange occurance, or at least strange for me. During the last couple of visits I have been asked a number of times if I have found a Basotho girlfriend in Mafeteng. I didn't even know that I was looking for one. Maybe it is because winter is approaching and cold weather motivates people to find partners. The people who are asking know that I am married, but they are still surprised when I say that I do not have a girlfriend in Mafeteng.

I think it exemplifies a cultural difference regarding relationships. The practice of having concurrent sexual partnerships (two or more sexual partners at the same time) is fairly common in East and Southern Africa and for the most part is accepted if everyone is discreet. There are also polygamous relationships which are obviously not discreet. Over the course of a life time the average number of sexual partners that a person has in these cultures and in cultures that practice monogamy, or serial monogamy, are quite similar. The difference is in the timing. People here in Lesotho may have long term committed relationships with a number of people, whereas in Canada we will move from one committed relationship to the next committed relationship – I realize this isn’t always the case in either country, but I am just sticking to generalities. I was at a workshop and one man referred to it as horizontal and vertical polygamy.

I am not trying to moralize or say one way is ‘right’ and the other is ‘wrong’. However, over the last few years the practice of concurrent sexual partnerships is getting more attention in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention. The acronym ABC is fairly common in HIV/AIDS prevention programmes: Abstinence, Be faithful, and Condoms. I think that usually the A and the C garner a lot of debate and discussion, but over the last few years more campaigns are now focusing attention on the B. In Lesotho the OneLove campaign started about a year ago.

It seems logical that people in concurrent partnerships face a greater risk of being infected. If I am with one person and we break up I can get tested and know my HIV status. In this manner I would be able to take actions to make sure that I do not spread the virus to my next partner. However, if I am in a long term relationship with a number of people, and those people are also in relationships with a number of people then it becomes a sort of sexual network. Also, because we are in a long term relationship the necessity for condoms is undervalued. However, as soon as one person in the network becomes infected then there is the potential of infecting a large number of people.

The message on this poster is "Don't be like a pumpkin." It refers to a sesotho proverb which goes, “men are like pumpkins, they spread themselves all over the place, and women are like cabbages, they hold themselves in one place.”

I have also been reading some articles that have talked about countries that a number of years ago identified concurrent partnerships as an issue and were running campaigns to address it. For example, in Uganda a ‘Zero Grazing!’ campaign was initiated by Ugandans in 1986 and was effective in reducing the number of people who had multiple partners and was showing some results in decreasing HIV rates. This was before funding for prevention efforts or condoms were widely available in Uganda. In the early 1990s outside agencies such as the World Bank and USAID came into Uganda and basically silenced the Zero Grazing campaign in favour of promoting the use of condoms. HIV rates continued to decline until the year 2000 when rates started to slightly increase. The increase is attributed to the fact that more people are now involved in concurrent sexual partnerships and because these partnerships are committed relationships condom use is not consistent.

May 10, 2010