Brooding

Went round to our new American friends' house for couples cards night (TM). They have recently come from a year of HIV work in Swaziland; now they are here for a year.

As I lost round after round of cards and quaffed my 'Tusker' beer the conversation turned to cultural differences between Swaziland and Tanzania, particularly with regards to HIV issues. Mke and I have briefly been in Swaziland in 2008, our recollection is of beautiful rolling hills and friendly people.

Tanzania has a 7% HIV prevalence rate; Swaziland has a nightmarish 20%. That rate is the highest in the world. AIDS has devastated Swaziland. Orphans and vulnerable children account for an estimated 15 percent of the total population. Life expectancy has dropped to just 32 years - the lowest in the world.

The long-term survival of Swaziland as a country is seriously threatened by HIV. Its possible the population may halve in a few years. That's apocalyptic stuff by any measure. What I struggle at times to understand is how people in a country can fail to mobilise to face a threat to a country's very survival. It's their family and friends that are dying.

We talked about the impacts of poverty, lack of emphasis on critical thinking, survival (ie egocentric) mentalities, cultural practices, donor dependence and such like. All happy subjects.

From my own experience in Tanzania it can be extremely demanding just to encourage people to engage with new ways of seeing old issues-especially if you are a white outsider.

I do get it, you know. I get how deprivation and culture can alter a person's responsiveness to long term abstract health issues. But I still struggle at some core level with people's lack of humanity to each other. Even if you are poor or badly educated, why do you have to threaten your wife with a beating or expulsion if she will not have unprotected sex with you? Why do you shrug apathetically as a doctor tells you how you can save your unborn child from being infected?

If you degrade another, you are degrading yourself and your community. I blame a Catholic upbringing and an unhealthy interest in human rights for beating that idea into me. Maybe I am a colonial elitist, maybe it is the 'Nationalism' History course I took at varsity, but I have a dim view of 'culture' being used as an excuse/justification for practices that enslave the vulnerable and suck the life out of a nation.

Culture can unify and uplift the spirit. But it can also degrade and destroy. Note, I am referring to any culture, including my own. I don't like it when the people calling out for 'culture' to be respected are the ones that are being unjustly enriched by it. It is not women or children demanding for 'culture' to be respected. They are asking for their basic rights as human beings. They want freedom and a fair go.

However, the above are just my views. I can't force them on others. As a white outsider, there will (rightly) be only so much I can influence here. Africa must find its own solutions. Whiteys can only assist communities to get what they want...we cannot tell them how they should live, despite how upsetting it can be to see the people ground down by 'the system'.

You can't externally demand people to change long ingrained negative norms. All you can do is slowly persuade one person at a time to have a think about what works for them. Even better if it is a local champion doing the persuading. Communities must generate and own their own solutions. I just keep trying to give a little help. For every person that sniggers at my gender ideas, or sees me wash dishes (and calls it 'womans work') I hope there is just one person who reflects a little outside the box on possibilities.