So today, December 1st, is World AIDS Day. It is an internationally recognized day to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS around the world and is part of a global movement to stop HIV/AIDS. Today in Namaacha, where I have been staying for training, I participated in a World AIDS Day march and rally. Although there was probably only a crowd of 100 people, it still was important for people in the community to come together and raise awareness and support in the fight against HIV/AIDS, especially in a border town like Namaacha, where the HIV/AIDS rate might be quite high.
It has been nearly 30 years since the disease we now call, AIDS first surfaced in gay men in New York and San Francisco. And although massive strides have been made, medically and socially, throughout the world, HIV/AIDS still has a devastating impact on people and communities in every corner of the globe. With over 40 million people infected worldwide, and millions more impacted, including those who become orphans, I would say that there are many, many more strides to be made.
In the United States the rate of HIV infection among women of color, and particularly Black women is frighteningly high. And, thirty years into the epidemic men who have sex with men (MSM) still have the highest rates of infection, just as was the case in the 1980s. There is no doubt that in the United States HIV/AIDS is directly connected to issues of poverty, racism, homophobia and sexism. And so part of working to stop HIV/AIDS in the US is to work against the forces of oppression, such as racism and homophobia that put people and communities at high risk for HIV/AIDS in the first place.
In other parts of the world, and particularly here in Southern Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Swaziland, Namibia, Zimbabwe) the HIV/AIDS pandemic is quite literally a humanitarian crisis. Millions of people, mostly women are infected with HIV/AIDS and millions and millions more, mostly women and children, are affected by HIV/AIDS.
Because I have only been in Mozambique for a little less than 2 months, and have been in training 24/7 I cannot really speak accurately about the epidemic. However, it is estimated that Mozambique has about an 11.5 percent HIV prevalence rate, which is high. What complicates Mozambique’s HIV/AIDS epidemic is the fact that many Mozambiquan men work for months at a time far away from home in South Africa (which has the highest HIV rate in the world), Swaziland or Zimbabwe. These migrant workers, including truckers, often engage in sexual relationships outside of their marriages and then come home to their wives in Mozambique bringing with them HIV.
As I said, I have not been here long enough to really understand all the realities of the epidemic and I probably won’t ever be in Mozambique long enough to really understand everything, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic is complicated and ever changing.
Many people think HIV/AIDS only happens to “those people”, but who are “those people” anyway? Blacks? Women? Gays? Africans? Drug Users? Sex Workers? Unmarried? Promiscuous? Godless? Unfaithful?
I tend to think that HIV/AIDS happens to us all. Although we may not all become infected with HIV/AIDS, we are all, whether we realize it or not affected by HIV/AIDS. And we are affected because before any of the labels that we or society place on us, we are all human. We have skin, and blood, and have feelings.
And it is the feelings of “those people” infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, happiness, hope, confidence, fear, isolation, shame and stigma that I connect with and touch my heart and then it doesn’t matter to me, where they live, who they have sex with and what label society may place on them.
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