*This post coincides with the Start of the Frontline Club AIDS/HIV Season. Check here, here and here.
I have worked in three developing countries.
On entering each one I was told that this is a deeply religious, old fashioned place.
Each time I heard that sex before marriage was unheard of and, more than once, that if you had a visitor of the opposite sex then you should leave your door open at all times so that there are no suspicions.
And then I start to find out for myself that, well, it’s not like that. Not at all.
The worst offenders for me are VSO briefings which always seem to be stuck in a whole other country, decade and morality.
In Vietnam where no one ever had sex before marriage, guess what? The teenage abortion rate was horribly high. We volunteers soon realised that the locals weren’t sticking to the same chaste agenda that we were being pushed.
We relaxed. The locals didn’t care.
By my second year I was living above my landlord and his wife. Both were in their mid eighties. Neither batted an eyelid when female friends stayed over.
In Nicaragua, the most Catholic of Catholic countries where homosexuality was illegal and condoms were frowned upon, what did I find? Well, an awful lot of men with an awful lot of kids from an awful lot of partners.
Oh and a gay Peace Corps volunteer, who is probably still there now, told me he had never seen so much action.
Here in Cameroon, where the “this is a very old fashioned, religious country” lecture was at its strongest, guess what?
Yup, everyone is at it.
AIDS doesn’t spread by magic and all those kids came from somewhere.
In an area where polygamy is still practiced it’s common for a 70 year old guy to marry a young teenage girl. People here want big families and if the old guy can no longer do the deed then the young bride is commonly sent out to get impregnated by whomever.
On special days called “Country Sundays” it’s even traditional for wives to go visiting boyfriends. A Fon shook his head recalling stories of husbands helping wives prepare to go and see their lovers.
Elsewhere I have heard stories of guys “warming up” for wives by spending time with their girlfriends first.
A Fon recounted stories of young men and women heading to the big cities of Yaounde and Douala and coming back with full pockets of cash, smart new clothes and infections. Their relative attractiveness soon meant they got the chance to spread it around.
What is true though is that sexuality is not in your face here. I was trying to remember if I had seen a couple kiss in public, then I realised that I hadn’t even seen a man and women hold hands.
While Vietnam was all open displays of romance and affections – Cameroon is hidden sex.
But yet sex seems expected.
While earlier in my stay I thought that female volunteers here were being targeted by guys because they were seen as have fewer morals than local ladies – now I am not so sure.
Maybe a motorbike taxi guy saying “you and I are good together” and following his female passenger into her house actually does pays dividends here. The volunteer in question was terrified.
Or how about the male volunteer who was accosted by a local lady on his way home who demanded his phone number and brandished her negative HIV test to prove she was a good catch?
Or a Canadian friend who was greeted by a male head of an NGO with the words: “Mama mia you’re a hottie”
And there’s an even more sinister side to it all. Every single villager I have met, when recounting the AIDS problem in their town, talks of under employed (or overly rich) men sitting around drinking all day and then later “funny things” (always that phrase) happen. Prostitutes take the blame a lot and yet I have never noted anyone here who is obviously a prostitute. I certainly have never been approached.
What about the horrific breast ironing that still happens in some communities where mothers flatten the chests of their daughters to stop them being attractive to men so they can avoid rape? Surely something so horrible could only be done to a family member because of the bitterest of experience?
And macho sexyality is everywhere. Beer is strong here. A colleague who ordered a beer weaker than the rest was told this it was beer for guys who: “couldn’t f**k properly”.
For all the talk of abstinence to avoid AIDS I don’t see it. Already I have often heard of men and women who have strayed from their partners because they aren’t satisfied – as if that was inevitable and fair behaviour.
For me it seems like too big a jump to teach abstinence and, for all I have said above, personally I am not about to preach my own morals to local people.
I don’t care if people have a hundred wives. I don’t care if a guy sleeps with every woman in town. I don’t care if a wife cheats on her husband every day of the week.
For me it’s all about AIDS tests and condoms and in the absence of either, not taking the risk.
On some levels AIDS doesn’t seem hard to stamp out.
Educate and test. Educate and test. Educate and test.
But I’m soon learning that nothing is easy here.
Hell I can’t even get the lights in my house to work or water to come out of my shower or the cable TV I ordered to show any football.
For the international NGOs that exist here, it’s a little sad that we don’t have a united front on how best to solve this problem.
If local people want to kid themselves about sex in their country then that is fine. But can the NGOs stop being duped and the guide books too?
People have sex everywhere. People like sex everywhere.
And sometimes we forget that sex is not a bad thing. It’s not sex that we should be trying to stamp out.
Here, at least, that would be way too big a challenge.
