HIV/AIDS TRADITIONAL NIGHTMARES–part 1
“The local population fears HIV/AIDs but do not want to prevent it. It’s quite creepy seeing people craving what they loathe and fear most” This article is exploring the perceptions of the local Dinka people about HIV/AIDS and what the South Sudan HIV/AIDS commission is doing in regards to public awareness and sensitization
BY KON Joseph LEEK, Kampala, South Sudan
September 2, 2015 (SSB) —– That awkward moment you begin growing thin as caused by stress or too much reading in boarding school and people begin to suspect you of being a HIV/AIDS victim.
That instant they begin refusing to share beds with you or catch your hand for greeting or share basins, bed sheets and clothes due to the fear that you might infect them as if HIV/AIDS were a skin disease
That moment people talks with you with their mouths half-open – Or begin to disperse at anytime you sneeze or cough with the fear of infection as if HIV/AIDS were influenza or flue
That moment people do not come close to you and touch you anytime you get some headache caused by hangover with the fear that you might have been wrestled down by HIV/AIDS as If it were hard liquor/alcohol
That awkward moment your eyes are reddened on Sunday morning because you have been out through out last night (Saturday evening) for weekends where you became too intoxicated with hard liquor…. And in the morning (Sunday morning) thereafter, people begin to stop looking at you straight to your eyes or else they get infected with HIV/AIDS as if it (HIV) were red eye (eye disease)
Not all the South Sudanese anyway gives such identifications and immediately relate them strictly to HIV/AIDS’ signs and symptoms, some few are fresh out of that.
South Sudan comprises of over 70% illiteracy rate and that population lives everywhere, most of whom are the type that hangs themselves on the neck till they die or tie their hands and throw themselves into the Nile in order not to swim when the life starts being sweet – that’s upon hearing or have been informed by the doctor that he/she is HIV positive.
You become a big suspect when you are lanky tall guy with brown curly and coiled soft hair, they believe that HIV/AIDS, when it is too close to strangling you, it starts softening and browning your hair.
Others, especially Khartoumers (those ones who were brought up in North Sudan and learned Arab ways of life), when you approach them for engagement/dating particularly when you are an East African type, the type they rarely trust for they sleep with Nyabos and Wewes (whom they regard as HIV possessed) – they look at you not as a human being but as HIV walking in the image of man, in fact as an HIV/AIDs embodiment
They despise using condom for any venereal diseases’ (STDs) protection. They usually have final decisions made on two points if any accepts to sleep with you;
1st. Being that, she has to sleep with you because she believes that you are fresh out of HIV/AIDS, what prove it to her is that, you are fat with protruding stomach, black haired (forgetting hair dye is highly used by grey hair guys these days), and always smartly dressed in suits. That reason is satisfying and too qualifying to make you sleep with her.
To them, a HIV/AIDs positive chap should be scrawny/bony, lanky with shrinking throat, a little-bit-axe head and red protuberant eyes like that one of a ripped tomato. Seeing you like that, she would then rush to concluding that, you are affected by the most dangerous HIV/AIDs type. In fact, they should consider you as too close to your grave.
2nd. Is that, if condom is used to protect pregnancy then there is no-worry because chloroquine and other medicines for abortion are too many and cheap in the pharmacies anyway
Condom is no need to be used to home-girls because it doesn’t give any sexual aroma and sweetness at any rate that is what they say, and don’t ask me where I heard it – as if sex was something edible to feel its test.
Many have given slogans against it (condom) like, “who feels the sweetness and test of sugar wrapped in a piece of polythene paper (cabera)?” referring it to sex where man’s tail (manhood) is wrapped in a sack (condom).
If you are where there is Dinka’s gathering and you begin to talk of HIV/AIDS, its protection and condom, they begin to think that you are either an HIV victim or another piece of burden who have learn the East Africans bad ways of life where they do not respect many words.
Words like sex, condom, and private parts are not supposed to be publically talked about in Dinka culture. Upon doing so, then you are either bad-mannered, lack respect, drunk, cursed or bewitched.
Even mentioning HIVAIDS itself, you do not to be too loud to be overheard or else you are another bad teacher who wants to make the children learn your shocking behaviors. What they bring to their minds is that HIV/AIDS infection or acquisition is related to immoral and abominable behaviors that are supposed to be forbidden in the society.
Fall in love with a Dinka girl and ask her about sex with condom anytime later, she would be like you are abusing her, “do you think I am a prostitute?”She’d snarl. Make no mistake or else she denies you her apple unless you give in to sleep with her minus that useless plastic wrapped on the tail which does not provide the sweetness of the stuff only used to sleep with the alien prostitutes
………………………….to be continued
The writer is a journalist and a commentator on contemporary South Sudan, he can be reached on j.konleek@gmail.com & 0955091449
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