23.07.05 - 18:16

Disclaimer: This entry is about AIDS and reproductive health and contains some graphic sexual language. If this offends you, please feel free to skip this entry.

However, I do want to write about sexual health in Mauritania. It is one of the gravest issues that Mauritania faces. Actually, it's one of the most important issues for the developing world in general.

But I'm not going to write formally. See, that's one of the biggest problems, it seems to me. Mauritanians aren't going to listen to a doctor or inspector preaching to them about the importance of a prophylaxis, or the necessity of curtailing non-exclusive intercourse. They're more likely to listen to friends, read comic books, check out videos and posters written in their own language. Just like Americans.

So here we go.

MAURITANIAN MYTH ONE: ABSTINENCE Unmarried people do not have sex. That is, unless they're immoral whores.

Sex outside of marriage is condemned by Islam. During the daytime, everyone agrees on this. But at night, one of my strict Muslim friends giggles, "God can't see you."

I live on the outside of town and, like Joe McCarthy, can give you a long list of people who don't act the way they claim to. People who walk past my house in the middle of the night, laugh and make strange noises by the river, and quickly return. So what's the solution? More abstinence-based education, Mr. Bush?

In my opinion, no. The Koran forbids extra-marital sex. Society condemns it. Yet still, large numbers of people engage in it. Sex happens. Let's deal with it rationally and with our eyes wide open.

Yet, all AIDS education in Mauritania fails to mention condoms or safe sex. Abstinence and fidelity are the only strategies given to avoid AIDS. Any other information would only encourage sexual activity. (Sound familiar? And dangerous?)

There also exists the idea of AIDS as a punishment from God. I have had friends and acquaintances tell me that the only way to contract AIDS is through prostitution. Others say that AIDS is a punishment for sinful sexual behavior. (What about the "innocents," then? The tiny babies? The wives unknowingly infected by their adulterous husbands? Unfortunate, they say. But the death of the wife and child serve to punish the adulterous husband who introduced the infection.)

And here's the crux of the reason I'm so obsessively worried about AIDS in Mauritania. So let's go back in time to the era of my birth, late seventies and early eighties. The AIDS epidemic had just begun in the United States, where it seemed to affect mostly homosexual men and drug users. In short, people that society looked down upon. People who, it seemed to be felt, deserved whatever bad things came their way. (I'm sure y'all remember the "AIDS as God's cure for homosexuality" poster campaign.) So there was little interest in the illness when it struck, little research, almost no education on preventative measures once they were discovered. People continued their unsafe practices, not knowing any better. And what happened? AIDS exploded across America, turning up in every social, economic, sexual-orientation, racial, and religious group.

Of course, that's an amazingly simplified version of events. But I still see lots of parallels to Mauritania. Here in Mauritania, it's not homosexuals and drug users, but unmarried or cheating sexually active heterosexuals. Still, with such little attention given to the well-being and sexual practices of this "minority" (which, in my experience, seems to actually be a majority), I think the HIV infection rate is going to explode here at an even worse rate than it did in the US. And once the rate's up, it's a Herculean effort to control the epidemic.

In summary, if "abstinence" doesn't work to protect against the spread of AIDS, let's move on to fidelity and sexual health education. Let's not just stop there, dooming myriads of ignorant people to death.

(I'll continue this in the next entry.)

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