Witchcraft, Vengeful Spirits and the Plague.(AIDS education fighting cultural bias)

Most Africans know what to say when asked about AIDS. HIV causes AIDS. Abstinence, fidelity and condoms prevent it. Western-style advertising campaigns have accomplished that much. So why aren't the prevalence rates plummeting? Because deep down, people don't fully believe it's that simple. They may hold to one belief system by day and another at night. "Someone did witchcraft on me and my eldest son got polio," says Salim Mohamed Said, a dhow captain on the Kenyan island of Lamu. He knows polio is a disease, and he also believes in witchcraft.

Traditional medicine in Africa attributes illness to contamination, witchcraft, natural causes or vengeful spirits. Blood, especially menstrual blood, is a contaminant. In this view, sex with a menstruating woman brings disease--including AIDS. It follows that postmenopausal and very young women are safe--a factor in the alarming incidence of child and "granny" rape. Many men also believe that during sex children can transfer an unused lifetime quota of good luck, staving off contamination. Death is also a contaminant. Widows must be cleansed by having sex with a brother-in-law or healer. In the capital of Botswana, I've met teenagers in Nikes who call AIDS bosgawadi, a disease brought on by having sex with a widow or widower in mourning.

The "ABC" injunction--"abstain, be faithful and condomize"--quickly runs afoul of tradition. In rural Malawi, a Red Cross study found most women believe sexual pleasure depends on direct contact with semen. Throughout the continent, children link the living to their ancestors. African men and women have unprotected sex until they have children. The language of AIDS prevention often doesn't ...