Post-Trip Reflections

Well, everyone, I'm back from Botswana, and I just have to say, it was AWESOME! I got to see the world, make new friends, and experience new things, some I never thought I'd try in a million years. During my two weeks in Africa, I hiked up a mountain, rode through the streets of Gaborone in the back of a truck at night, hiked up a mountain (and reached the top), tried ostrich, ox tail, and springbok (all of which were delicious), danced with adorable little boys at a Tswana 21st birthday party, met the nicest people I've ever encountered, played with the cutest kids in Botswana, negotiated prices at an open-air market, went on safari and saw impala, ostrich, a warthog, and cheetahs up close, learned the traditional way to grind grain, and of course, through it all, made new friends along the way.

The interviews with organizations and individuals about HIV, alternative energy, and democracy were great. Although we didn't encounter everything in Botswana that we had been reading about here in Detroit, the  readings still provided a good context to compare our experiences against and gave us background knowledge to ask informed questions. I was surprised at how informed and educated everyone's answers were. Here in Detroit, if you asked someone about HIV, alternative energy, or democracy, they'd probably give you a stilted, stuttering, unsure answer. In Botswana, at least about HIV and alternative energy, everyone was very knowledgeable and gave well-spoken answers.

Talking about democracy and government, however, was another matter. Most of the people we spoke to either had only praise for the government for its anti-HIV program and support of alternative energy, or just refused to comment on it at all. Only a couple of professors, like Dr. Sebudubudu, were willing to be critical of the government, along with a few college students from the University of Botswana, who weren't afraid to voice their opinions against the ruling party, the Botswana Democratic Party. I thought it was very brave of them to stand up for what they believed in, particularly when doing so could have consequences. When they mentioned that they believe they're being followed and their cell phones are being tracked, I actually became frightened for them. I wondered if we were doing the right thing, interviewing them  about political freedom and including them in our documentary, even though they consented, when they could possibly face harm as a result of their cooperation with us. I really admire them for their courage, and I think it gives those of us who interviewed them a standard to measure by whenever we ourselves are challenged for our causes and beliefs.

Overall, this trip was incredible in more ways than one, and by the end, I truly did not want to leave. A year ago, I never could have imagined that I would have spent my spring break in Botswana conducting research on how HIV and alternative energy affect democracy. I miss seeing my classmates every day because we grew so close as a group during the trip. Traveling to Botswana has changed the way I look at democracy and opened my eyes in so many ways. I can't express enough how glad I am to have gone on this trip.

It Takes a Village...

            I really enjoyed the speakers from this week.  It was really interesting to hear about the experiences of the two grad students.  They’ve been in our place, and they actually took the opportunity to go to Africa and design water pumping and filtration systems for villages.  Instead of just hearing about villages not having clean water and responding passively like so many of us do when we hear about these issues, they actually went there and created devices to improve villagers’ quality of living. 

            It really got me thinking.  One of the grad students, Tim Carter, was only a few years older than me.  He started going to Africa and working on these projects while he was still an undergrad.  He had a direct impact on those people’s lives, and he didn’t have to wait until after he graduated from college to do it.  Working on a project like that is something I can really see myself doing, and I’ll definitely keep my eyes peeled for an opportunity like that in the future.

            The speakers were also an example of our readings for the week being put to use in real life.  In Chasca Twyman’s “Participatory Conservation? Community-Based Natural Resources in Botswana,” she says that community participation in a project or campaign decreases when it’s presented to them in a way that doesn’t let them take ownership of it.  She calls this “planner-centered participation,” which results when project planners see community members as simple pawns in their plan – if the villagers follow the plan of the developers, costs will stay low and everything will work like it’s supposed to.  Not surprisingly, this usually doesn’t work out too well.

            The other kind of participation Twyman discusses, and the kind experienced by the grad student speakers during their time in Africa, is “people-centered participation.”  This is a type of process that empowers local people by giving them control over local projects, meeting community needs, and bringing issues to the attention of everyone in the village.  In order to make people care about something, they have to feel like they have some stake in it.

            This is what Carter and the other grad student, Darryl Pearson, encountered in their work in Cameroon, Kenya, and the Gambia.  In Carter’s project, the entire community helped to dig the trenches for the pipes to deliver water to the community pumps.  In Pearson’s work, he sat down with the village elders to figure out how to help them, and then built the water delivery system with the help of locals.   In both cases, the grad students put their projects in the hands of the community and let them play a vital role in making it happen, which gave the villagers much more reason to get involved with it. 

            It’s now one week until we leave for Botswana, and I’m incredibly excited.  I hope all of our research turns out to be fruitful, and that our six days spent in Botswana are filled with exciting new experiences.  I can’t wait! 

"Not me" is not an excuse anymore

When I was growing up, we had a ghost living in our house.  This entity’s name was “Not me.”  The perpetual question would be asked, “Who left the bowl of chips on the floor?” “Who made the mess?” “Who’s responsible for that?” The answer would usually be, “Not me.”   Quite often, “Not me” did a lot around my house. 

Now, it seems, “Not me” has expanded its horizons and moved on to a larger target.  Now, it seems, “Not me” is responsible for the health of the environment and taking solid steps in moving toward alternative energy sources. 

The “Renewable Energy:  The Deceptive Global Consensus” reading discusses a speech made by Al Gore in Italy in 2004, in which he named the top threats to the climate health as being the Earth’s population explosion, scientific and technological developments, and  the lifestyle of rich countries.  The article point out that by assigning such broad causes, everyone, and therefore no one, is responsible for the condition of global health.  The blame isn’t pinned on one person or country, so everyone can point fingers at their neighbors and say, “It’s not our fault.  They do higher pollution rates, so they’re the ones who need to take action.  It’s not me, it’s them.”

There have been efforts made by some countries, especially in Europe, to turn toward renewable energy sources, but it hasn’t been on the level that it needs to be to truly turn the tide toward alternative energy sources.  The “Why Alternative Energy and Fuels” reading reveals that the United States consumes about 25% of the world’s crude petroleum supply annually.  The U.S. needs to be one of the countries taking a leading position in the movement toward alternative energy sources, and so far, it hasn’t gone as far as it needs to. 

Thus comes the idea of urban gardens.  They’re not the ultimate answer for saving the world, but they can’t hurt, and they’d bring communities together.  They’ve already started to take hold in Detroit.  Corporations like Hantz Farms are turning vacant lots into community gardens to provide local, homegrown food, jobs, and a common tie to bring people together to work for something greater than the individual. 

This is an example of why it’s important to cultivate “social capital” (people power, community engagement) as well as “physical capital” ( buildings, sidewalks, etc).  As discussed in “Community Development Through Gardening:  State and Local Policies Transforming Urban Open Space” by Jane Schukoske, the attempt  in the 1950’s and 1960’s to improve physical capital in cities may have resulted in a nicer-looking cityscape, but it also desolated the social capital in some areas.  One example right here in Detroit is the destruction of Black Bottom in the 1960’s.  A once vibrant community was destroyed as the freeways cut right down its middle in the name of progress. 

Basically, what we’ve been seeing is that not everything valuable in this world can have a price tag on it.  The “natural capital” described by “The Next Industrial Revolution” is invaluable.  Natural capital entails the normal resources that usually come to mind - water, minerals, oil, trees, soil, air, etc – but also includes ecosystems like coral reefs, savannas, and rainforests.  Yet too often, we take those ecosystems for granted because although they’re pretty, they don’t in and of themselves have a tangible monetary value, and we let them be destroyed so that other resources like wood and oil can be removed and used by consumers all over the world. 

Social capital and neighborhood commitments are valuable, and so are ecosystems like the rainforest.  The rainforest holds the potential for millions of medical cures, but if we keep destroying it, we’ll lose them forever.  I don’t mean to go all Pocahontas “Paint with all the colors of the wind” here, but we really need to step back and re-evaluate how we value the resources of this world, not just according to the price they could bring on the world market. 

This time, it can’t be left to “Not me.” This time, it’s everyone’s problem, and instead of being no one’s problem, everyone needs to take a direct step, whether that be on an individual level (using reusable canvas bags for shopping instead of plastic bags), a community level (starting an eco-friendly garden to strengthen community ties), or a governmental level (standing behind environmental sanctions and not backing down to the demands of big fossil fuel businesses). 

We can’t stand around pointing fingers; everyone made the mess, so everyone needs to clean it up.  “Not me” just isn’t good enough anymore.

What would happen if the Playboy Bunnies had AIDS?

For me, this week’s reading was really thought-provoking.  It started when I read Marlon Bailey’s “Performance as Intravention:  Ballroom Culture and the Politics of HIV/AIDS in Detroit.” 

First of all, I acknowledge that I’d never heard of Ballroom Culture in my life before reading this.  I didn’t know there were “houses” (headquarters) all over the U.S., let alone in Detroit.  The whole concept of having a house led by a “mother” or a “father” to provide the stability and support of a non-biological family to those rejected by their families and communities for not being “normal” and heterosexual, to me, is really something.  The mothers and fathers provide a pillar of guidance in the lives of their children and give them information about safe sexual practices that might not be absorbed as well coming from someone else.  The community hosts balls, which can draw people from all over the country, and distributes HIV/AIDS awareness information through competitions.  This is a great example of creating an HIV/AIDS prevention campaign with solutions found within the community and tailored to the target audience.  Most people don’t respond well to an overwhelming campaign of solemn facts and information thrown at them; it’s scary, confusing, and comes from a distant source (the government, health professionals, etc).  Like the ABC’s in Botswana, such a campaign is made up by someone outside the targeted community and consequently, the campaign doesn’t fit the needs of its community.  Make the distribution of knowledge into a game or a competition, with a prize and prestige attached for winning, and audiences are much more likely to be receptive of the message, especially when it’s being told to them by their people in a similar situation to theirs.

This, however, leads us to the whole question of how to determine who should be the targeted community for HIV/AIDS campaigns and what designating a group of people as a “community of risk” can entail.   As Bailey mentions in his article, in intervention campaigns, the term “communities of risk” is used to stereotype and stigmatize people who are already viewed outside the moral and economic boundaries of society.  Basically, he argues, non-heterosexual minorities, who are statistically more often than not poor, are lumped under the “at-risk” label because society already sees them as having done something wrong or not being desirable.  Therefore, something in their behavior or morals must have led to this epidemic of HIV/AIDS among people “like them.” Researchers can even unwittingly fall back on these stereotypes in their research, skewing their viewpoints and perpetuating the stereotypes with their published work.

One possible example I found of this happening in our reading this week was in Ojikutu and Harris’ article “Moving Toward a Unified Global HIV/AIDS Agenda:  Communities of Color in Crisis.” In the article, they state that “In most South American countries, MSM is the most commonly reported risk factor for HIV.”  Exactly what does this imply? Does it imply that men who have sex with men are more promiscuous than their heterosexual counterparts? Does it mean that men who have sex with men are less capable of understanding posters urging them to condomize than the rest of the general public?  It seems to, and it totally disregards factors like poverty, discrimination, homophobia, and unequal access to medical care that may lead to increased risk for contracting HIV/AIDS. 

You can see it in our very own society, and you don’t have to look past your TV screen.  My question is what would happen if Hugh Hefner came out and admitted that he was HIV positive?  The biggest playboy in the world, and his various “bunnies” over the years…he’s not exactly the model of faithful monogamy.  Does he have concurrent sexual relationships?  My guess would be probably.  Then you tell me, why would the rest of the world be so shocked at his “coming out” with a disease like HIV?  It’s because he doesn’t fit the model.  He’s white, rich, straight, and one of the biggest celebrities in Hollywood.  It’s easy enough to mentally assign AIDS to “some junky” or “some cross dresser” hanging out on an imaginary street corner, but what if it was Hugh?  Or a blonde-haired, bue-eyed, perfect-body Playboy bunny?  America looks at them and thinks...Sexy? Yes. AIDS........never in a million years.  America’s socks would be rocked by that revelation because we’d finally have to confront our stereotypes of who contracts HIV. 

“Black Sexuality, Social Construction, and Research Targeting the Down Low” argues that African American communities have for the most part excluded homosexuals because they don’t want its stigma and the accompanying stigma of HIV associated with it and giving the rest of society another reason to badmouth “black sexuality.” I argue, however, that across the board, we feel comfortable assigning HIV/AIDS to those on the outskirts of society because we’re terrified of the disease so we put it as far away from us as possible.  Normal people aren’t like “them” (minorities, non-heterosexuals, etc), so therefore, normal people don't contract their disease. 

Such thinking is wishful and ignorant, and the longer we think this way, the more society as a whole puts itself at risk and isolates its members who are most in need of support.

Girl Power?

Hi everyone! I’m once again refining my views on the “ABC” concept of HIV/AIDS prevention campaign going on in Botswana right now.  The third part of “ABC”- condomize- encourages sexual partners to use condoms in order to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS during sex.  This, however, assumes that in heterosexual relationships, women have equal power in the relationship to men’s power, and that they can demand condom use by their male partner. 

Last week, we talked about how Western-designed HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns fail to take Tswana culture into full consideration, and therefore are failing to live up to their full potential.  This is another example of that.  In most places in the West (not all, but most), women have mostly equal rights to those of men.  In the U.S., the 1960’s and 1970’s saw a political and social movement toward women’s rights to put them on equal footing with men.  Although there are still instances of discrimination against women in the workplace, women have achieved more equality with men. 

This isn’t the case in Botswana, or at least, not when it comes to relationship power standards between men and women.  As Cathy McIlwaine and Kavita Datta note in their article, “Endangered Youth? Youth, Gender, and Sexualities in Urban Botswana,” traditionally, women aren’t allowed to deny their husbands sex.  According to traditional culture, men may beat their wives until they agree to sex.   Going up against physical force like that, few women are likely to push the issue of using a condom if their male partner doesn’t want one.

There’s also an economic aspect to it.  In the article “Going Beyond ‘ABC’ to Include ‘GEM’:  Critical Reflections on Progress in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” Dworkin and Ehrhardt use the term “feminization of HIV/AIDS,” meaning that women are at the highest risk for HIV/AIDS because of contextual and cultural elements.  Nearly 50% of HIV-infected people worldwide in 2004 were women, and factors like gender inequality and denial of education and work opportunities contribute to that.

These are factors that can’t be solved simply by telling people to abstain, be faithful, and wear a condom.  These are social structure problems that are perpetuated through years of gender roles, stereotypes, and cultural norms.  Fixing them is going to take programs with deep-set roots designed by Batswana in order to address culture norms disregarded or unrecognized by Western programs.  Keeping girls in school gives them a better chance at finding a good job, which makes them less likely to be pressured into marriage for economic reasons or selling themselves for sex, which increases their risk for contracting HIV.  That’s a simplified version of a solution, and it’s certainly not the only way to help women reduce their risk for HIV/AIDS, but it certainly would help.

I thought it was really interesting in Rob Pattman’s article, “Men Make a Difference:  The Construction of Gendered Student Identities at the University of Botswana,” how there’s a double standard for men and women when it comes to drinking alcohol.  When I think of a university, I tend to think of it as a liberal place and more likely to be gender-equal.  This undoubtedly is based on my own experiences at WSU.  However, I was really surprised to read about how men display their masculinity through drinking and hanging out in “Uganda”- the campus bar.  Women, on the other hand, are seen as loose or improper if they drink. 

It just made me wonder what the Tswana students will think of us when we go over there.  If the ladies in our group ever mentioned going out to a bar or having a typical college party experience, will the Batswana judge us?  Will they think of us as “loose”?  How will they expect us to interact with the males in our group?  Will we be the stereotypical immoral Americans?  These are just the questions that popped into my head, and I guess we’ll just have to see when the time comes!

A Different Way of Thinking

                In last week’s post, I discussed how education and awareness of HIV/AIDS are important in preventing the spread of the disease in Botswana.  At the time, educating people about the terrible effects of HIV/AIDS and how to stop its spread didn’t really seem that hard.  You put up posters, have doctors and other authorities inform people about it, and give people access to condoms, and they’ll get the idea.  After this week’s reading, however, my perspective on education has changed completely.

            How exactly do you run an information campaign against a disease you can’t see?  In what language do you print billboards and pamphlets for distribution among a people- English?  Setswana?  Both?  What kind of images do you place on these materials?  Do images of pregnant women on billboards encouraging testing for HIV before pregnancy encourage safe sex practices, or do they, as Bagele Chilisa suggests in her article “Educational Research Within Postcolonial Africa:  A Critique of HIV/AIDS Research in Botswana,” create gender divides and caste blame on the pregnant mothers for infecting their children with HIV because they were not aware of their positive status? 

            Chilisa’s article seems to suggest a sort of “Western conspiracy” in which the campaign against HIV/AIDS is led by the Western/White world  to penetrate all aspects of African economic, political, and cultural life.  The idea, she says, is to wipe out the indigenous culture and replace it with a Western-style homogeneity that keeps colonial power structures in place.  My response to this is that this position is that it seems far-fetched, but then again, as an American citizen who isn’t able to read the minds of the Western leaders in power, maybe I’m wrong.  For now, however, I would say give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re doing their best to help.  Maybe they’re not going about it quite right, but at least they’re trying.

            I do agree, however, that the campaign against HIV/AIDS in Botswana does need to be better adapted to its context.  In Suzette Heald’s article, “It’s Never as Easy as ABC:  Understandings of AIDS in Botswana,” she argues that too much focus is put on teaching the biomedical aspect of HIV, without taking people’s personal experiences into account.  It tries to force people to think of disease in a way that they’re not accustomed to do so. 

            We as Americans value straight-forward logic.  A causes B, and this explains C.  Rationality is our expertise.  African thinking, on the other hand, according to Chilisa’s article, is more circular and more in tune about people’s relationships to spirits, the environment, and other people.  Asking people to believe that a microorganism is causing so much suffering because it’s the logical cause seems obvious to Americans, but it might not seem as believable to a Motswana who is used to explaining illness in terms of having done something wrong and being punished for it by ancestors.

            I definitely want to emphasize that this isn’t ignorance or a lack of intellect on the part of Batswana.  It’s simply a different way of thinking, one that Westerners are not accustomed to.  It forces us to question our definition of knowledge.  Is the Western definition of what we know to be fact really universal?  Do we really have the right understandings, or are we the ones who need to step back and re-evaluate? 

I’d also like to talk about the exclusion of traditional healers, diviners (dingaka), and spirit churches from the HIV/AIDS campaign.  Right now, they’re excluded because they’re seen as backwards, not modern, and superstitious.  I ask if that is really the case.  Even if they’re not scientifically measurable, sometimes the simple act of believing in a treatment can have huge health benefits.  A scientific example is the placebo effect:  in studies, even when people were given sugar pills but told they were given the real medicine, some of the subjects still saw results similar to those experienced by subjects taking the medicine.  Faith healing in the U.S. is another example.  Whether you believe that it’s healing by a divine power, or healing through the power of believing yourself to be healed, one cannot deny that belief is a powerful thing. 

Is it really right to brush aside thousands of years of traditional beliefs in charms, taboos, and spiritual practices just because science can’t prove they work?  Instead of vainly assuming that the scientific, Western way is the only way, maybe HIV/AIDS information campaigns should try to work hand-in-hand with traditional dingaka in order to make their message more relatable and believable to Batswana than the “A- Abstain, B- Be Faithful, C- Condomize” campaign that’s occurring right now.

One form of communication isn’t better or more intelligent than the other.  It’s simply a different way of thinking.

"Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself."- Albus Dumbledore

                This week for class, we were asked to read a book called Saturday is for Funerals written by Unity Dow and Max Essex.  The book takes an in-depth look at the HIV/AIDS crisis in Botswana from a factual, scientific perspective (told by Essex) and from the personal stories of those impacted by it (told by Dow). 

            I enjoyed the book, and recommend it to others who have an interest in learning about HIV/AIDS.  Dow’s part contains absolutely heart wrenching scenes of Batswana people’s lives ripped apart by HIV/AIDS, while Essex’s part accurately explains the details behind HIV/AIDS without losing readers in the process.

            What struck me the most while reading the book was how people fear this disease so much that they won’t even name it.  People infected with HIV try to hide their illness by calling it something else.  When someone dies of AIDS, their family members blame other diseases or don’t name it at all.  Even in hospitals and clinics, where you’d think that people would be most open in talking about the disease, it’s called “the radio disease” or “the disease without a name.”  In Saturday is for Funerals, one AIDS victim’s cause of death is listed on his hospital chart as “Lost to follow up.”

            Call me a nerd, but the first thing that popped into my head was Voldemort.  For non-Harry Potter fans out there, Voldemort is the evil wizard Harry fights against throughout the series of books.  People are so scared of him that most of them don’t call him by his name, but instead to call him “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”  It’s the whole idea that when there’s something scary lurking in the shadows, we prefer to call it by a less-threatening name so it doesn’t seem as terrifying. 

            What this really is is a form of denial.  By not recognizing illnesses and deaths as the result of HIV/AIDS, the people in Saturday is for Funerals try to pin their suffering on diseases that can be cured, such as tuberculosis.  Curable diseases can be dealt with.  It’s when you have to face the cold hard truth that you’re infected with a lifelong disease that will eventually kill you because there is no cure that things get really terrifying.  You watch as it kills your friends and family members, and then it comes for you.  I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to learn that you’re HIV positive.  

            However, as scary as this disease is, there are ways to treat it and live years after infection occurs.  The government of Botswana is making antiretroviral treatment available to anyone with HIV to keep it from turning into AIDS, and is encouraging everyone to get tested regularly.  The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (www.unaids.org) reported that Botswana has reduced the mother-to-child transmission rate to less than four percent, and the number of AIDS deaths has been decreased by 50 percent.  Education about the disease and how to avoid it, such as by using condoms and not having multiple concurrent partners, plays a crucial role in helping the infection rate go down. 

            The first part of education is awareness.  People must admit there is a problem before they can take steps to solve it.  As FDR said in his inaugural speech, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  Although there is no cure for HIV/AIDS yet, the people of Botswana, and of the world, can take an important step toward stopping its spread by knowing how it’s transmitted and its consequences.  The only way to overcome something is to look it straight in the face.

http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/

If you have more questions about HIV/AIDS, check out this website for more information!