A week workshop in Mansa for PEPFAR, HIV/AIDS training, it was the first time I have had my heart to heard it all by my own ears and spoke about it with my own mouth, took a HIV test and all....just to enourage our counterparts to follow the same....so we can both go back to our villages to convince villagers to the clinic to do the same as we did in the workshop......
To sum up what I have learned are the understanding what is HIV/AIDS, its symtem and its treatment, and it is transmitted by sex the most, blood transmittion the second......it is not spreading by air or with simple contect, unless enough quantity and quality to be transmitted to the root acceptance...HIV possitives should think and live possitively and take good diet so all could be possibly to live a full term of life.
Our jobs after this workshop, on the top of what we all do, are to combine the HIV/AIDS info sharing, encourage all people in Zambia to take HIV test, skill training on supportng the HIV possitives to care for themselves accordingly and care/escort to them as each of our responsbilities......
It is seriouse in Zambia for not all population have had a test yet, I only know, if I could be right, the age group of 15 to 49 are only 14% in the whole country.....and the effected rate in country was 14%+ as 2008's figure???.......
Their calcuture allows to have more than one wife, plus all sorts of reasons to wed a young girl around 15 to all ages and all generations...or use virgin girl to cleanse HIV or other illnesses or defilement by the father.......the spread of HIV/AIDS seemed no easy way to stop...same as early age pregnancies.........
While I was encouraging fish pond farmers at villagers meetings to send all their girls continue to go to school, pregnanted or not, I had not have HIV/AIDS in mind, now the load is even more serious than just what I knew than the young girls absent or discountinuing to go to school...
Sorry for telling you these sad, sad facts......Cheng 5/28/2011
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the work you're doing. I know Mansa, because it's the hometown of my upcoming wife. She found her life somewhere else and has her own business right now in South Africa. Not the best place to be as Zambia is much safer.
Mansa is a lovely place but it's forgotten: Zambia has a potention to grow and it really does come back to the Copper-years of the 80s: You can see what happened the last 10 years: Econimic freedom, stable Gouvernment and peaceful people. But all is focused on "Big Lusaka"
There must be found a way to pay attension to develop the countryside but keep the traditions. And solve problems like HIV and abuse of women, but that's only a part of the problem.
The young people in Mansa work on the land to feed their family but it's also important to go to school. I think part-time school will be the best for them. School fees ar high even there and although illiteracy is not bad at all in Zambia, it is in Mansa. It's hidden...
If financial help should be given, investing in primary school and at least a short College-project for let's say 3 years would be a good investment.