Business of LifeI had never heard of cleansing widows, a common ritual in some parts of rural Africa. A widow is forced to have sex with one her late husband's relatives to break the bond with his spirit and save the rest of the village from insanity or disease.
Sharon LaFraniere, writing for the New York Times reports that AIDS is now compelling Africa to challenge this common tradition.
In a number of nearby nations including Zambia and Kenya, a husband's funeral has long concluded with a final ritual: sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives, to break the bond with his spirit and, it is said, save her and the rest of the village from insanity or disease. Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life.
In the tragedy of AIDS in Africa - 25 million infected with HIV, 2.3 million dead last year alone, there are small glimmers of hope. Women rights activists prodding political and tribal leaders to change a cultural practice I can only call barbaric, like another common cultural practice, female genital mutilation.
I believe that one of the reasons the Catholic Church is having such success in Africa in attracting new converts and priests is that they offer a higher morality, one that respects and honors the individual man or woman.
Those who think that condoms and "safe sex" are the only way to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa, have failed to examine closely the success in Uganda. Dr. Edward Green of the Harvard School of Public Health has.
Green, who examined the Ugandan experience scientifically, wrote in a recent report:
"Few in public health circles really believed — or even believe nowadays — that programs promoting abstinence, fidelity or monogamy, or even reduction in number of sexual partners, pay off in significant behavioral change. My own view of this changed when I evaluated HIV prevention programs in Uganda and Jamaica."
According to Green, HIV prevalence rates dropped 70 percent between 1991 and 2001.....
He added in his study: "Some reports continue to claim that the world's great success story in AIDS prevention, Uganda, owes its achievement to condoms, but this is not true."........
Nantulya credits Uganda's "zero-grazing" — or marital fidelity — campaign as the major reason for Uganda's success in fighting HIV/AIDS. Green added that according to the Demographic and Health Survey, 95 percent of all Ugandans age 15 to 49 now report practicing monogamy or abstinence.