Editor’s Note: Cleaning
your own house
Our tour guide stopped
the van by the side of the highway in Capetown, South Africa.
He pointed to a hut at the side of the road, off in the grass,
not tall enough to stand up in.
There, he told us, teenage
boys anywhere from ages 13 to 17 were recovering from circumcision,
a tribal rite of passage to manhood that’s done in cold
blood, with the same blade used without sterilization from
boy to boy. “What does that do for the spread of HIV?”
our guide asked rhetorically.
I thought this must be an
urban legend, like alligators living in sewers. But a week
later I saw a television documentary on Nelson Mandela’s
life, and he talked about going through this painful ritual.
I talked with a Capetown woman who’s living with HIV.
She said—and I don’t know where she gets her numbers—that
of 10 boys undergoing the ritual, two come out with HIV, two
are mutilated and maybe one dies. Yes, there are talks going
on to change the practice, but it doesn’t seem like things
are changing soon enough.
I couldn’t believe that
a conscientious person like me hadn’t heard of this ritual,
especially since it clearly spreads HIV. I had heard of circumcision
on young girls, also done in cold blood, and much more brutally.
At the International AIDS Conference, I learned of a practice
in another African country where the father of a groom, the
groom’s uncles or any other man who had contributed to
a marriage dowry could have sex with the bride first. This,
also, is found to spread HIV.
I’m a great respecter
of culture. But cultures often need to change out of necessity.
In so many ways, we are all alike. I’ve heard of so many
men and women in the United States who don’t tell their
sexual partners that they have HIV. I’ve also heard of
so many people who’ve been infected this way, some of
whom were out and out lied to about their partner’s HIV
status.
We all have our ways of spreading
HIV. Everyone—including South Africans—thinks South
African President Thabo Mbeki is crazy for not supporting
HIV therapy to fight the astounding epidemic in his country.
But here in the United States, the government practices genocide
by not supporting and funding syringe exchange for drug users.
Cultures need to change,
wherever, however, they’re killing people.
Enid Vázquez
Interim Editor
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