One Life, One Wife

Dec 1--World AIDS Day. Where else can one see pygmies dancing with flutes and feathers and bells? For the first time in two years, Bundibugyo managed to pull off the official celebration on the actual day. The ceremonies started FOUR HOURS late, but at least it was still Dec 1. It was a classic official function: UNICEF tents and plastic chairs, dusty heat, milling people, everyone waiting and wondering when it would really start, coming and going, bustling organizers, hot cokes, an intermittently working sound system, schools and dance troupes waiting on the sidelines, ridiculously late arrival by the "big men", the nagging sense that no one really WANTED to be there, the three circling mentally ill men who occasionally hassled presenters and whom no one dared to confront. There were a few innovations. Save the Children put together some educational games, people played with bottle caps and dice. Pat's Peer Educator Groups offered HIV counseling and testing on the spot. Once the ceremonies got under way, a half dozen HIV positive people stood up and gave testimonies of the normalcy and health of their life, of thriving on treatment. This was followed by a primary school where girls in grass skirts danced suggestively with miniature boys, bizarrely counter-message, while singing songs with lyrics along the lines of "AIDS has finished our lives, AIDS is a terrible disease, AIDS is taking our children, we are sick." I found the paradox of the messages interesting: do not fear and discriminate, we people living with AIDS are just like you, we are healthy, we have children, we are OK. And: AIDS is fatal, AIDS ends your life, be careful, don't get AIDS. Both messages are true, and necessary, the first to combat discrimination, and the second to soberly warn against promiscuity. Like many true things in life, they both need to be said, loudly, with music and dance and color and vigor.

Scott's speech was filled with data on HIV in Uganda and in Bundibugyo, acknowledging the good news on progress in treatment and stability of  prevalence in Africa over the past few years, but then challenging everyone to realize that a steady prevalence in an area with a doubling population means twice as many AIDS patients. He quoted  a professor from Uganda from the Lancet: "We can not treat ourselves out of AIDS."  Meaning that access to medication will not stop the epidemic without changes in behaviour. And he ended with the "One Life, One Wife" campaign, modeled on the national bird which pairs exclusively, the Crested Crane. Preaching monogamy in Bundibugyo is a bit like preaching the holiness of poverty in Northern Virginia, it is a counter-cultural message that seems to deny people the very thing of value towards which they work: progeny. But our prayer is that in a safe and exclusive relationship they will discover the truth, that love lasts longer than multiplicity. I find it interesting that though the Uganda campaign for ABC: Abstinence, Be Faithful, Use Condoms, could be seen as an attempt to change culture .. . the practical outworking of the public health party today was to preserve culture, giving a forum to traditional dance and song and language.

Someday a World AIDS Day will not be necessary. Meanwhile the dust will fly from the stomping of belled legs, the skirts will swish, the heads will nod, the drums will throb, as another celebration draws to a close, and we hope that a good percentage of the onlookers go home challenged if not yet changed.