|
|
|
|
> FGE The Amazing Wedding
> Bridal Abduction
> HIV / AIDS
|
Like many Muslim
women in the area,
this workshop participant is reticent in discussing
what up until now has been
a taboo subject. AIDS deaths are rising most rapidly
among young women who have limited access to health
information, and have often been subjected to harmful
traditional practices which put them at greater risk
for infection.
|
|
The statistics are clear and horrific.
Ethiopia is one of five nations in the world with over 2 million
people infected by the HIV/AIDS virus. In 1999, Ethiopia’s
AIDS death toll was 280,000 – highest in the world except
for India. By 2005, deaths will rise so rapidly as to reduce
the average Ethiopian life expectancy by 17 years. By 2008,
over 10 million will die. These stark projections come from
the United Nations Development Programme.
Few nations are more emblematic of the “Feminization of
AIDS” than Ethiopia. More than half the HIV/AIDS victims
are women aged 15-49. The fastest growing population by far
is teenage girls. The infection rate in girls between the ages
of 15 and 19 is seven times of boys their age. Yet, a 2000 survey
found that more than 60 per cent of women ages 15 to 24 did
not know that a person who looks healthy may be infected with
HIV.
|
|
|
KMG drama groups perform plays
and songs against FGE and other harmful traditional practices.
At a conference for 600 teachers, KMG actors depicted
abduction, genital excision, and gender inequality in
the workplace, provoking intense discussion. |
One of the reasons young women are at such
high risk is FGE, the crude surgery that subjects young
women
to the excision of their external genitalia, leaving them
with chronic infections and scars that tear during intercourse.
Another silent transmitter of the HIV virus are the “plastic
bag” doctors who travel rural areas with crude, reusable
blades in plastic bags advertising themselves as “surgeons”
who “operate” on young girls for $5 each. Soldiers
returning to our region from wars exacerbate the problem.
In collaboration with the International Organization for
Migration (IOM), KMG has also launched a program to help
prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS that includes introducing
the female condom to the wives of demobilized soldiers to
help them protect themselves and to raise their awareness
of reproductive health issues. Socio-economic forces are
also to blame as girls, trained
for little but household chores, flee degraded rural areas
to cities seeking work, only to be raped or turn to prostitution
to survive
Through its integrated programs of health,
environment, and livelihood,
KMG is doing its best to fight back on all these levels. When
we held our first anti-HIV/AIDS rally in 1999, AIDS was a
word no one said out loud in Kembatta. Those who knew about
it at all saw it as a “sinners disease.” The next
year, our rally brought 4,000 participants who watched educational
films shown at night on a school field and cheered the region’s
first-ever live theatre. “Any concept of performance,
theater, drama, is totally new for the region,” said
Boge Gebre. “What is amazing was those young women and
men who were never before on stage performed and even improvised
scripts about FGE and about how HIV/AIDS is traveling at such
a fast rate to rural areas and killing women, even unsuspecting
wives.”
 |
Performers in the KMG AIDS drama
group have had no training in theater,
however, they’ve proved to be amazingly inventive
writers and persuasive actors. |
The United Nations Development Programme asked
KMG, a small, young organization, to develop in Ethiopia
an innovative program that works intensively with local communities
to help them create unique campaigns to combat HIV/AIDS.
KMG’s
first program was in the largely Moslem district of Alaba,
where illiteracy is extremely high and 100% of girls are
subjected to FGE. Now, KMG has been asked to expand this
program to
other districts.
 |
|
KMG actors perform out of
doors in Alaba.
|
Educating our people about HIV/AIDS is something
we do constantly. Every building we build, every program
we operate,every grant
we seek has a critical component aimed at fighting AIDS.
For example, we are beginning to convince the traditional
surgeons
who perform FGE to understand that they are actually harming
the young women they once believed they were preparing for
marriage. But, by asking them to stop, we are robbing these
respected women of both status and income. At our Mother
and
Child Health Center, we plan to train them as network of
rural HIV/AIDS educators and birth attendants, with access
to virtually
every village in the district.
|
|
|
|
