Beads of Hope:
A journalism student researches a jewelry-making program that empowers women to change the face of AIDS in Uganda
By Merritt Watts
Red is everywhere in Kampala. Not the red I see on a daily basis here in the United States—like Bono’s (Product) RED apparel lining the walls at Gap stores, or the ribbons pinned to the lapels of celebrities at award shows. The red in Kampala comes from the ground up. It starts in the relentless potholes that begin inches below Kampala’s roads. Women with homemade brooms bow at the roadsides to sweep the inevitable red dirt off the streets. The passing boda bodas, motorcycle “taxis,” that prefer to bypass traffic by swerving off the roads, stir up dirt, undoing the women’s hard work. The red dirt clouds hover and drift through doorways covered by thick blankets. The clouds pass under walls of rusting corrugated metal.
Months after ending my three-week stay in Kampala, I still couldn’t get the red out. It settled in rings around the tops of my socks and the necks of my shirts. The dust had become embedded in my clothes and shoes when I trekked across the region in August 2006.
After volunteering in Uganda, I became fascinated with the country. When an international research grant became available through my journalism school, I applied for funds to travel and research HIV prevention communication campaigns in Kampala. Four months, $3,500, and lots of paperwork later, I found myself on my first night in Uganda reading the daily newspapers underneath a mosquito net until the electricity went out. I spent my days walking from my small room in a guest house at the top of Namirembe Hill to the Makerere University Library to research, driving to newspaper offices to interview editors, and hopping on the back of bodas to weave through traffic and make it to my appointments at NGOs.
Uganda was the first African country to reduce its HIV prevalence rate, and I explored the capital city in hopes of encountering a fairy tale ending to this optimistic scenario in the fight against AIDS. The decrease in HIV/AIDS prevalence from approximately 30 to 15 percent in 1991 to close to 6 percent in 2003 has earned Uganda the reputation of a “sub-Saharan success story.” When rates plummeted, the world noticed, and many pointed to Uganda’s unique approach to HIV/ AIDS communication. The country’s leaders, including President Museveni, addressed the AIDS problem openly. Public information campaigns introduced the now much celebrated “ABC model” for prevention communication.
The alphabet letters stand for “Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms,” a three-pronged approach to encouraging behaviors that protect against HIV. The campaigns were apparent as soon as I had arrived at Entebbe airport. A billboard on the two-lane paved highway between Entebbe and Kampala bore a picture of a young woman’s wholesome face: “She’s waiting for marriage—what about you?” the billboard read. A popular newspaper ad addressed “Something for Something love” by depicting a mini soap-opera in comic book form: an older man gave a young school girl a cell phone; the girl, later with a rounded belly and tears on her cheeks, stared at the cell phone with regret; and in the final scene, the man was led away in handcuffs as the young woman got scolded by her mother.
These ABC-type campaigns are termed “behavior change communication” by scholars who research such tactics, and “communication interventions” by the NGOs and government agencies that create them. Similar to the anti-smoking “truth” campaign in the United States, the ABC campaign uses statistics, information, and powerful stories to change attitudes about sexual behaviors, and improve the health of the country.
As a journalism student, I loved the idea that communication and mass media may have saved lives and made a difference in Uganda’s future. I framed my research question around the disputes I read in American media and heard in our political discussions: how can the government balance these supposedly conflicting messages—abstain and use condoms? It’s a question first asked in America’s high school health classes and later by aid programs for HIV in Africa. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program launched by President Bush in 2003, requires that one-third of prevention funds must be used for abstinence-until-marriage programs. An article in New Scientist ( May 6, 2006) asked, “Is campaigning for abstinence and fidelity, to the significant exclusion of condom promotion, the right way to tackle HIV in Africa?” An editorial in the New York Times ( May 13, 2006) warned, “The elevation of ideology over both science and local needs is deadly in this case.”
However, as soon as I arrived in Uganda, I realized that debate within the country went far beyond the moralistic dilemma of abstinence “versus” condoms. Newly released data from the Uganda HIV/AIDS Sero-Behavioral Survey 2004 to 2005, indicates that although HIV rates are stagnating, it is becoming a “female disease.” While 3.4 percent of 20- to 24-year-old men have HIV, 7.3 percent of women the same age have the virus. For the first time in 20 years, the most affected age group is 24- to 35-year-olds, instead of 15- to 24-year-olds. These are not the kind of demographics that point to a young, uneducated, and sexually experimental population gambling with the threat of HIV. Instead, being a married, monogamous woman can be a risk factor for AIDS.