“No one wants to be rejected by their society. Your friends, your family, no one would talk to you. I wouldn’t want to do that.”
As I lay in bed with my older host-sister Metarere, her genuine words provided the most clarity to the taboo subject that I had heard in Namibia so far.
Apprehensive of crossing social lines too quickly, I hesitated before my next question, “So, if you got AIDS, would you tell anybody?”
She blinked a few time and looked me straight in the eyes, “Not if I would lose my family.”
• • • • • • • • • • •
“In Katatura and Khomasdal and Windhoek, the people know about HIV and AIDS problems. We live in the city. We hear the radio commercials. We see the posters. We watch the T.V. If you live in the city, you shouldn’t be having AIDS.”
“So those posters, downtown on the billboards, do you think lots of people look at them?”
“No, not really, time is rushing for me. I don’t really look at them. I know AIDS from where I am working. Our work groups, one person in them, is going to meetings about AIDS and is telling us about it. People where I am working are talking to each other about it. We know. We live in the city.”
“So, if all of you here know about it, do you think it is a problem?
“I know it’s a problem in the rural areas. People are not watching T.V. in the rural areas. Oh, you know Chloe; you will be seeing when you are going to the north.”
“Do you talk to your family in the north about HIV and AIDS when you visit them in the north?”
“They are not talking about it in the north. They are not liking it. You will see Chloe.”
“Your daughters – Metaa, Onoo, and Tjizembua – do you talk to them about HIV and AIDS?
“They know. They are living in the city. They are talking about it at their schools.”
• • • • • • • • • • •
These strong women discussed AIDS freely and honestly. They expressed personal convictions as confidently as Universal facts. They displayed the education of personal AIDS prevention. They knew the answers to their individually identified problems with HIV/AIDS in Namibia. They weren’t aware of AIDS ominous presence around them. They didn’t know they could help combat the problem. They did trust that the government would take care of everything but vested in them lived indispensable suggestions of aid.
With a few more simple questions, the knowledge of conscious and compassionate citizens bubbled out the women. Creating support systems for patients with AIDS, guaranteeing “coming out” would not cut them off from the world, providing well-paying programs to encourage Namibian citizens to train and teach about AIDS in the rural areas, breaking social taboos about sickness and disease, and above all, acting with benevolent love. I sat listening, amazed. These women never read the theories of western development specialists, they never memorized the struggles of health care in southern Africa, they never spent the hours developing themselves into better global citizens, but they knew the problems, and, more importantly, they identified viable solutions.
Local people hold the keys to sustainable development; they just need someone to build them the door. The Western world needs to listen to where the citizens of tri-continental countries want to go, look at their blueprints for their societies, and then Western developers can use economic power to gather the tools, hire the carpenters, and help the developing to help themselves. Human resources exist in every human, they each hold solutions – they just need encouragement.
“Asking questions that open up more options can lead to many unexpected solutions … Questioning can change institutions and entire cultures. It can empower people to create strategies for change.”
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