“Stigma (Sociological Theory), the phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute, which is deeply discredited by his/her society, is rejected as a result of the attribute”

Latin Root: Stigmat-, stigma (mark or brand)

Swahili word for stigma: Unyanyapaa

literal translation: to recoil in disgust

 I lived in Tanzania for three years but I am by no means an expert on what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of the kind of stigma that an HIV positive person or an orphan in Tanzania is subject to on a daily basis. I can only share what I have seen and heard from those who have been most deeply affected by the obvious whispers, the pointing fingers, and the cold shoulders of coworkers, neighbors, and family members. 

Throughout the years, while working with Mama Oska, we often found ourselves discussing what life was like for her and the stigma that she was faced with in her community. Instead of hiding and shying away when confronted with ignorant and hurtful comments/actions, Mama Oska decided early on that she was going to stand tall and continue to live her life on her own terms. 

She decided that she was going to continue singing in the church choir despite sneers from her fellow parishioners. She decided that she still wanted to be a village leader despite declaration of her imminent death from the current leaders. She decided that she was going to tell the world about her story and her status despite the fact that there was little understanding or compassion for what she was going through. She decided that she was going to keep on fighting and live, both for her son, herself, and the countless other individuals that were struggling with the same issues as she. 

All of this was not easy and came at a cost but Mama Oska, and the thousands of people that she has empowered through choosing to live the way she does, believes that it was and is the only way.  Without a voice or a face to put with HIV, it is easy for people to throw out hurtful and ignorant comments. Mama Oska recognizes that much stigma stems from peoples fear and ignorance so she spends much of her time educating the community and anyone who will listen. 

Many times, those who are most hurtful are people who live secretly with the disease, and who are trying to distance themselves as much as they can so that they themselves are not stigmatized by the community. Others are ill educated about the Virus and are uncertain as to how it can be transmitted. In the 10 years that she has been living openly with HIV, Mama Oska has seen many changes in peoples attitudes and practices but there is still a long way to go.

 Anyone can experience stigma however different societies regard different attributes as being tabu. An individual with a certain attribute could be praised in one society but treated with disdain in another, solely based on social norms. A person could experience the effects of stigma because of religious preference, sexual preference, weight, ethnicity, social standing, economic status, age, health history, employment history, etc. 

Final thought: Stigma is in every country and every community. Please take a minute to think about your actions. Is there anyone in your community that you may be unfairly judging? Maybe it’s a homeless person in downtown, a more conservative/liberal member of your religious group, a gay/lesbian/straight neighbor, a democrat/republican co-worker, or a migrant worker. If someone comes to mind, try to take 10-20 minutes this week to sit down and start getting to know them. Focus on really listening and asking sincere and caring questions and let us know how it goes.   

With all the research I’ve been doing, I’ve realized that numbers have consumed my mind. 

33 million, 76%, 1.7 million,  2.1 million,  22.5 million, 3 out of 4,  90% , $123 million, $7-10 billion, $15 billion. 

It’s easy to simply concentrate on these numbers because they are so overwhelming and alarming.  But, more importantly we need to look past the simple facts and figures and delve into the real issue. 

I recently came across this quote from the book The Little Prince; 

Grown-ups are like that…When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters.  They never say to you,  “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best?  Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand:  “How old is he?  How many brothers has he?  How much does he weigh?  How much money does his father make?”  Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him….If you were to say to the grown-ups:  “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all.  You would have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.”  Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!”      

I’m reading this book The Invisible Cure, and here are a couple a points that she makes that I think we need to keep in mind.-AIDS is a social problem as much as it is a medical one in Africa.

-In Africa, sex crosses social boundaries more frequently than in the West. It occurs between rich and poor, urban and rural, old and young, and this sexual mixing gave rise to an “epidemiological pump” that drove the virus through the population.”

-Such behavior is normative in many African societies, concurrent or simultaneous sexual partnerships.

-Those most likely to spread the virus are often at an early stage of infection and are not in need of treatment. In many cases, their infections may not even be detectable by HIV tests. Because Africa’s health-care infrastructure is in such a dire state, treatment programs are expensive and difficult to administer, even when the drugs themselves are practically free.

-The most successful AIDS project tended to be conceived and run by Africans themselves or by aid workers with long experience in Africa. By people who really knew the culture.

-Supposed faithful men and women are also at high risk, not from their own behavior, but from the behavior of their partners.

-Because so much HIV transmission in Africa occurs in long-term relationships in which there is a degree of intimacy and trust, condoms are seldom used, and this makes the epidemic even more difficult to control.

-Women in transactional relationships may be more vulnerable to HIV because they are more likely han other women to tolerate an unfaithful partner and also to seek out additional concurrent sexual relationship themselves.

After talking with Keri about what life was like in Moshi, she mentioned how the Catholic faith was a huge part of people’s lives. I decided to read up a little, still digesting some of it, but here are some interesting things I came across:

Africa has witnessed the most explosive growth. In the 20th century, Africa went from a Catholic population of 1.9 million in 1900 to 130 million in 2000, a staggering growth rate of 6,708 percent. Half of all adult baptisms in the world, the surest sign of missionary expansion, are in Africa.

On average, we have a Christian/Muslim clash maybe two days out of the year, but it will certainly get the attention of CNN and the BBC. It’s too bad they don’t bother to find out what we do the other 363 days of the year. We suffer together, and face the same political issues. The dividing line between oppressors and oppressed cuts through both groups. Religion is not the problem; it’s people with another agenda.

Some observers say that as Africa develops economically, secularism will take hold there too, and in the end you’ll think like the West.
That’s a very arrogant position to hold. It seems to say that if you’re not wealthy and powerful, you’re a fool. This is absolute rubbish.

John L. Allen is NCR

Africa has the 3rd largest number of Catholics in the world, behind Latin America and Europe, respectively.
Even today, Islam remains the largest religion in Africa, claiming almost one-third of the continent’s 300 million people.

Arab traders and slavers established footholds for Mohammedanism in East and West Africa. But Portuguese sailors of Prince Henry the Navigator also dutifully carried Catholic missionaries with them on their 15th century voyages along the coast of Africa

The new religion also brought important material benefits. From the first, missionaries emphasized education and medical care (often building schools and hospitals before churches), and Christianity became the avenue to health and literacy. In many an emerging nation, church schools were the training grounds for future post-independence leaders

new Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, were asked to give up many of their tribal cultural traditions. Not only were the most dehumanizing practices proscribed—ritual murder, human sacrifice, slavery—but also many other institutions that were an intricate part of the fabric of communal life. Polygamy was almost universally forbidden. The ancestor cult, a belief that the dead remained a part of the village and should help control its life, was discredited. Ritual dances and chants, ritual drinking, even the traditional and critical rites of passage—ceremonies marking birth, death, puberty, marriage—were treated as lapses into heathenism…..

the recent shift in the official attitude of the Catholic Church towards non-Christian religions including African indigenous ones, is as historic as it is revolutionary. The Second Vatican Council remains both the culminating point as well as the point of departure for bold and positive developments that we witness currently in inter-religious relations

was one which strove to transform, not destroy, the people’s religious consciousness. The missionaries realized that the people’s traditional religious ideas were not so much incorrect as incomplete, and required only completion and sublimation.

The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with reverence those other ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. … The Church therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the social-cultural values found among these men”(art. 2).

Masses all across the continent are beginning to employ old dance forms and chants. In Zambia, even the tribal lamentations at the bedside of the dying are being reintroduced. Vernacular masses can be found almost everywhere, and native drums, long used to call the faithful to church, are now a common part of many religious services

The National Black Catholic Congress reports that there are 24.7 million Catholics in Zaire, 17 million in Nigeria, 12.8 million in Uganda, 11.6 million in Tanzania and 9 million in Kenya.

John Paul II papacy was noted that in Uganda and Africa, where AIDS has claimed millions of lives, the pope’s opposition to the use of condoms may “have contributed to more deaths in a region whose Catholic population had more than doubled during his papacy

by Christian Morrow

This no where close to complete…..but it’s given me some things to think about….

I would love to hear some feedback, about this topic…..What do you know about it? What do you think about it?

Keri did a great job finding these facts on AIDS and HIV in Africa… Some really alarming figures…

-Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most affected region in the global AIDS epidemic. Although just over 10% of the world’s population live in this region, more than two out of three (68%) adults and nearly 90% of children infected with HIV live here.

- More than three in four (76%) of global deaths due to an AIDS-related illnesses in 2007, occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. This proportion is stark evidence of the unmet need for antiretroviral treatment in the region.

-In sub-Saharan Africa an estimated 1.7 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2007, bringing to 22.5 million the total number of people living with the virus.

-the majority of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (61%) are women.

-AIDS continues to be the single largest cause of mortality in sub-Saharan Africa; of the global total of 2.1 million adult and child deaths due to AIDS in 2007, 1.6 million occurred in this region.

-Children are particularly affected—there are an estimated 11.4 million orphans due to AIDS in this region.

-Currently, 33 million people worldwide are now living with HIV

-the total number of people living with the virus in sub-Saharan Africa is 22.5 million

-Over sixty percent of these are women – mostly young women.

-although two thirds of the people who need treatment are still unable to obtain it.

-Prevention is the key. It is a highly complex issue. But this can be no excuse for inaction.

-And we still have a long, long way to go to make HIV prevention truly effective.

-Despite all the progress we’ve made, for every one person who starts taking anti-retroviral drugs, another five become infected with HIV.

-Instead of getting shorter, the queues for HIV treatment become longer by the day, and the provision of universal access to treatment gets more and more expensive.

-This is a frightening prospect. It highlights the fact that AIDS is going to be with us for a long time to come – not just for years but for generations.

-We are already paying the price of not taking stronger action to prevent the spread of HIV earlier on in the epidemic.

- If we don’t do more to prevent new HIV infections today, prospects for the future are grim and costly.

-Globally speaking, fewer than 10 per cent of women in low and middle-income countries have access to services to prevent mother-to-child transmission As a result, half a million children are born with HIV each year.

-In many cases, the relatively low status of women, and discriminatory attitudes towards them, mean that they feel they can’t take vital steps to keep themselves healthy.

-Ignorance is a major issue. Some women simply don’t know the most basic facts about HIV.

-Others have information, but can’t act on it because they are so dependent on male family members, and so terrified of the stigma that surrounds HIV that even if they know they should get their partners to use condoms or take an HIV test, they don’t dare to do so.