At the present time, I would like to inflate you to my good friend and colleague, Dr Connie Chung, who graduated with a doctorate and two master's degrees in Worldly Development and Psychology from Harvard University, USA. In the appointment 2009, Connie won the Harvard Assign on African Studies project that funded her study on gender and HIV in East Africa and this brought her into close contact with the small town of Iringa, in Tanzania, Africa. She met with Anthropologist Joseph Lugalla, who was part of the Iringa Development of Small, Development and Variety Exactness and at the rear of a sharp research of Iringa and the project's objectives, began committed with the project. I had a conversation recently with Dr Connie Chung re her experiences in Iringa and re her opinion about women and HIV-AIDS in East Africa. Connie provided me with a keleidoscope of indescribable experiences tied with her inferences from the project and her views. The stakeout is an citation of my chat with her.........
AB: It is very tighten up chatting with you re your experience with the gender and HIV-AIDS project in East Africa. I support been thinking about it and the first inspection that comes to my mind is 'this is such enriching and obliging phenomenon. For instance drew you to this project, Connie?
CC: I was level to gender in the role of I had ahead of time worked with young girls who were forced or pressured into prostitution and had volunteered with Aids Object Los Angeles. More than a few of the girls that I had worked with had settled STDs fashionable their sex work, and females are excellent biological to tidiness HIV tabled heterosexual intercourse than males.
AB: And what research prep did you do by means of you used up for Africa? For instance were your expectations?
CC: I wrote a charge that I sent to my advisor, the Harvard Assign on African Studies, a current which was sent to an anthropologist who focuses on HIV in Africa and similarly mock to an Anthropologist who worked with street youth. I did an whole script review before to coming to Africa.
I was expecting to see a absolute level of be looking for, total that I was focusing on street intimate and AIDS orphans. I similarly frequent to support burden adjusting to the liven up terms and education.
AB: And did you ? Was it how you inspection it would be? How uncooperative was it?
CC:......I would say that in attendance are layers to the experience, sometimes bloody and at erstwhile times joyous. I had burden with the physical terms of my experience, but over time I grew in tune to it.
My exposure to Africa before to my captivate was very a great deal based on Western media-and sometimes in a way that blended paternalism, tact, and/or superciliousness. Prior to separation to Africa, all I heard about Africans was polite concern, insatiability, apartheid, and memories of commercials transmission a flat broke or barren African child. These snapshots of Africa are in effect very limited, and steadily streamed to the West en masse without well-brought-up education of the complexities of African geopolitics and their education. Pretty, we eminence Africa as some out of the ordinary, strange erstwhile,without recognizing its solution internal carefully selected and the complexities of financial progression in the aftermath of colonial rule. I wouldn't say my experience was as uncooperative with respect to adjusting to the cultural deter and difference, but I did support limitation experiences that were very hard. I was robbed in Kenya, and I find again crying being I woke up in a bed masked with lizards. The latter story is not flag of what it is like to live in East Africa, but I completed up staying in one hall that had a problem with lizard infestation. I still vividly find again the lizards, and crying being I had never been delimited by lizards by means of and inspection they would collide with me. Way of life robbed was an emotional experience too. I had to grow a thicker layer, and set apart that I was very fortunate to support emblem access to basic resources. Departed time, I in the swing of things to the mere talk of meeting my helpful needs. You can be robbed someplace, so this isn't a portrayal that if you come to Africa, you'll get robbed. I converge passable of foreigners who lived in Africa for living on end and support never been robbed. But persons two memories were very uncooperative for me.
The people were very churn out to me. Diverse people went out of their way to welcome me to their home, sharing out anything resources they had. Offering was a glow and favor that permeated my social networks, and I similarly welcomed the novel pace of life and how in circulate I felt with my core values. I did a lot of soul penetrating in Africa, and I think it friendly me a clue of therapy. I grew up in Los Angeles, a sound muddle interesting with the gaiety industry. Consequently I stirred to Boston, a city with a high group of academics who are ardently determined and/or competitive. In East Africa, I lived in a hall with chickens, boiled tarn to bleach it normally, bathed in a elastic tub, and sometimes didn't support a toilet, at once tarn, electricity, or a rinse. I voted for chickens on the way to work, and sometimes saw monkeys sulky my forward. My mom grew up in a end way, having been raised on a curb. But I wasn't. I loved my new life.
AB: It sounds like a bittersweet experience in some ways Connie. But considering that you were for a project, let us talk about the project a petite. Articulate me about the valley of women in taken as a whole and persons afflicted with HIV in Africa. How did the project song persons requiring help? Who were you focussing on?
CC: Tanzania, Africa is a labyrinthine place. I procedural in Iringa, Tanzania which is a momentous travelling origin for ?migr struggle separation to Zambia and erstwhile countries. Offering was a high group of men migrating for drifter tramp and biting HIV and also diffusion it lay down drifter transit routes everywhere sex work was brash. Tanzania, Africa similarly allows polygamy so a man could infect merged wives at a time. So, the amount of the problem is colossal. Education and socio-economic status were big barriers. Peak of the initiation lived on less than a money a day and condoms were very feel like. Cultural beliefs were sometimes at opportunity with utilizing condoms and in attendance was still a lot of cultural fault about HIV and a very high predominance. HIV/AIDS afflicts a high share of several regions in Africa, an incidental numeral of 16% of Iringa people has HIV.
From what I understand, the engine had social struggle who outset street-based intimate (female and males) who were liven up in flat broke terms outdoors. Diverse of whom had been orphaned by AIDS, and sometimes settled HIV on the streets or from dawning. In terms of adult women, we steadily worked with Masaai women who were semi-nomad tribal women. Despite the fact that, I am unclear as to their HIV status: this was excellent in the context of microfinance aspects of the engine with association progression models.
AB: For instance did the project marvel to variety ? And was this feasible?
CC: I think this project was model at technique support for AIDS orphans tabled accommodation, educational supports and similarly provided microfinance/business loans and small association developmental training to disfavored women and youth. Past you tidiness HIV, solidity and availability of ARVs is rash. More than a few of these people seemed to be able to access ARVS but were not continually expected in rob their prescriptions. Despite the fact that, I directly be suspicious of that enriching common lives by be looking for dip efforts, educational outreach, and social support, the project was able to save some degree of support and help to the women and intimate afflicted with HIV-AIDS.
AB: Was anything ruined at all in terms of medical aid to these women and children? How were the resources and facilities medically? Did these women support access to them?
CC: In terms of medical care, IDYDC provided care and support to HIV positive people across age and gender groups. It partners with Cable physical condition Sophisticated, Football for Comfort movements, USAID, Create Health-CHAMPION project, Sophisticated Small Stand, GrassrootSoccer, and FHI-Tunajali project for excellent resources that are health-specific.
AB: For instance is the understanding of the people and more the women afflicted with HIV-AIDS and their wisdom about HIV?
CC: I think that on one occasion you are firm with functionally untaught women who may be significantly clever but didn't support the resources to give out focus, understanding Western conceptualizations about medical diseases can be very out of the ordinary and novel. Plus, these women are firm with life stressors that are so intense: 5 or 6 intimate, liven up in difficult be looking for, without mop up tarn, etc. that excellent information that does not collect with their narrow beliefs can be uncooperative to documentation or nearing enact
AB: Did they hold out for the HIV test? Did the project impart incentives for these tests?
CC: I do not converge.I am not positive if in attendance were incentives for rob HIV tests tabled this engine. I think testing centers are fruitful, but abundant people are detached to in effect get tested and converge their status. Offering is still a great deal cultural fault related to HIV status, and sometimes people store to support malaria somewhat.
AB: How do you think gender injury affects a woman with HIV status in Africa?
CC: I think gender injury affects women's access to physical condition care, education, social support, and making empowered decisions about their sexual physical condition. Shows potential condom use in effect
assumes that women support uncensored stakes and choice in the discretionary use of a condom.
Sometimes men may forgo or gibberish condoms on the basis that it numbs their ambition, and some women who do not support the resources to get by on their own may simply go lay down with what their ally says. 80% of HIV infections in Tanzania are via heterosexual sex.
Saying no to sex, using condoms, or limiting sexual ally exposure (such as a man who sleeps with merged women, or accumulating one's own partners) are contingent on erstwhile variables related to power, access, status, and gendered ways of being everywhere women are steadily in a position of less power yet the sarcasm is that women are excellent biological to be troublesome with HIV from heterosexual penetration than men. But sexual ruling making is undergirded by so abundant cultural ways of relating and understanding gendered norms that women may sometimes be put at a injury and also bearing in mind support less resources with they tidiness the disorder,level surface if settled in a situation of exploitation or forced bottleneck.
Sexual category injury isn't so continually so sound, or black and washed-out. The elapsed example of not being in a position of reciprocal power in negotiating sexual physical condition refuge, such as condom use must not be excessive that African men are mysogynistic or that African women are just losses of gendered and erstwhile forms of structural/personal exploitation. That would be an over-reduction of a tricky issue, and not the body in abundant relationships amongst partners. Despite the fact that, in attendance are still some intense seated cultural norms about gendered roles, gendered separation of tramp, and ways of negotiating relationships-particularly for such a easily offended side as sexual intimacy-that I individually am not privy to, or do not to cut a long story short understand. I never antiquated an African man, and abundant cultural ways of family/gendered life are still very strange to me. Despite the fact that, some ways of relating that I did regain, as a cultural eyewitness, not from a precise form of study or tentative research-is that abundant of the women that I dealt with (which does not represent all Africans, of administer)-and who are mainly very poor and support low education/literacy levels, is that they were steadily significantly delegation on men for basic life, and sometimes that changes the tenor of how sexual and erstwhile personal decisions are negotiated in a way everywhere the women were less advantaged, or in a position of intense bet for HIV.
AB: From what you support just mentioned, it sounds like these women support very few choices with regards to their life. Did you support the prospect to speak to any of these women personally?
CC: Yes I mock to them directly on one occasion I was in attendance. I think that choice and prospect are not only personal, but structural in nature. So I do want to attention that abundant hard committed, significantly clever African men similarly confronted solution curb in their concern or educational stalk. In the areas I visited, the levels of be looking for could be very difficult. Asceticism is a compounding bet factor-it permeates whatever thing from physical condition care, to education, to literacy, to bet for HIV, to family dynamics, sexuality and gendered norms, family dynamics, and incorporation with polite society. So the range of choices that abundant (not all) of these women confronted may be very exact in comparison to an African of better financial resources and education, and sound exact in comparison to abundant spirit class Westerners-however, they still aren't losses. They still exercise choice, level surface if these choices are made in put the last touches on challenge, simplicity, or bullying.
AB: Do you think you were making any difference to them more if they were HIV affected?
CC: Nation movement among young men in Tanzania is terribly high and this is similarly a restriction to physical condition care, heal conformity, and maintaining care. My own feeling is that the biggest difference is on one occasion you empower people to empower themselves on a workers level. IDYDC headquarters are principally unworried of local Tanzanians or people who forever relocated to Tanzania to help out. So any toil that I put in must sooner or later be about facilitating narrow populations to access resources, and thereby build their own networks that proliferation social measures to help their own people. If anything, they made a condescending difference in my life. They changed my face about life and love, what be looking for looks like, and how strong the human vessel is on one occasion faced with unfair be looking for and mess up
AB: Do you feel considering the multitude of problems we support just discussed, the project was a success? For instance would you call a success ?
CC: The aim of the organisation is to decreased charisma rate of new personal belongings of HIV virus over a 5-10 appointment sit astride and to kind a condescending knowledge of HIV/AIDS, destigmatization of the illness and people who are troublesome and escalation social support and quality of life for HIV-infected public. ARVs support changed the quality of life for people with HIV. Shows potential accepting conformity, targeting size of physical condition, education and be looking for dip, all strong shielding factors for HIV are overcast goals. If you live without access to mop up tarn, you're functionally untaught liven up on less than a money a day, if you live on one collation a day, also you support to language success as a pure person-their socio-emotional needs, teaching the physical condition care access and solidity of requester use of available medical care in in the past troublesome public, rations, mop up tarn, essentials for good physical condition on one occasion exempt functioning is in the past undeveloped from the endemic, and educational needs.
Me: Would you like to curb what you learnt from this experience and how it changed you to be a better person?
CC: I astute abundant personal and spiritual lessons from this experience. I astute the power of human grit in the headland of massive debacle. Diverse of these girls/women still laughed, had families, had friends, tried to do the best with what petite resources they had: fighting for a bit of construct with anything skills they could organize. I similarly astute that by virtue of being untutored in the Linked States, I was fortified from abundant assaults such as underfeeding that thump abundant public in wet behind the ears nations.I learnt that I was ably to support mop up tarn, access to a doctor and was fortunate to be able to read and support an education. Comfort takes abundant opposite forms
and rationale is steadily built in the mires of intense and unbearable plague. IN Stipulation OF For instance I astute about women, I will say that I astute that gender injury is reified and reproduced in a education of concealment and shaming. In the function of women don't support access to mop up tarn, emblem access to construct, prudish physical condition care, who cannot read, and who are sometimes delegation on sex work to survive-it may be uncooperative for them to to cut a long story short footing, or nearing institute changes, that reflect Western medical philosophy about physical condition care and safer sexual physical condition practices. I very be suspicious of in the power of communities advocating for themselves on a workers level-African women advocating for African women, Africans advocating for Africans, and this must be ruined in a endure everywhere basic resources and absolute physical life are not the highest booming concerns of the day.Consequently as women grow prudently, they can charter a novel administer in how they call themselves in sexual/romantic relationships, and how they go over sexual ruling making.
and make choices about their bodies, their physical condition, their disclose, their opinions, and reveal on their pin core values in a endure of safety, respect, and understanding. I am not claiming that African education is anti-women, or that I understand the polished, tricky and small dynamics that overawe gender relations but that gender and how women empower themselves are still issues that need to be debated, voiced, and roughly heard. It is also that HIV/AIDS, be looking for, rape, sex trafficking, mess up, (all of these terms which similarly do its stuff boys and men) will support less of a destiny to bud in such an background of convenience, destigamatization, and personal empowerment.
Thank you Dr Connie Chung. We thank you for sharing out your experience and wish you all the best for deliberate endeavours.
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