HIV and AIDS: The Global Inter-Connection

DAWNING AWARENESS

 Letitia Laniyonu, Adeola Peters, and Coyin Oke
Interviewed by George Orick

A number of Yoruba women in the Ibadan area were asked to share their insights and opinions about the disease and its prevention. The women, who spoke quite candidly, generally expressed the view that men's attitudes and behaviour are and will continue to be a major threat to the health of women and children in the age of HIV. The attitudes and opinions expressed by the three women presented here are fairly representative of all the group interviewed. 

Letitia Laniyonu

Posters put up in public places say that HIV is a killer disease. It is something that you can come in contact with by being promiscuous. Apart from that, I don't know what HIV really is. Some people say it's a virus. Some people say it's something else. From what I have heard on the radio and read in the papers, it looks as if each sex can pass it on. They say you can't get it unless you are in contact with somebody who already has it. I don't know if women could give it to men because we are really not well informed about this disease.

Now, in my own rural area, I don't really see people getting HIV, because we don't have any of these modern opportunities. We don't have really any nightlife. Most of us are farmers. After going to the farm, you come back home. I believe that we haven't got a recorded case of AIDS because our men don't go running after strange women. It is acceptable to us that men can have many wives or mistress. Most of the men have many women in their house. They don't have to go out. The women know one another. If any of them should have a disease, the others know immediately.

But what can we do now that our daughters and our sons are going into the city? What about our youngsters who now see this polygamous life as not so good? They want to show that they are monogamous, but in the end they might make a slip or two, and that slip might cost them their lives. What can we do about it? Information about what HIV is, and how to prevent it, is the first thing we should teach our young people.

I am sixty four years old and I have twelve living children.

My eldest, who was born in 1953, is now happily married with three children. My youngest is fourteen years old. I talk to my children freely about sex, and perhaps that has made me lucky. When the girls began their puberty, I told them about what troubles they could get into through sex.

Not many women will talk openly with their kids about these sorts of things. But I am a trained nurse, so perhaps that gives me an edge over other women. I'm retired, but I still work with women in my rural area. That's how I found out that there's a need for us to talk to other women about giving their children sex education. Not just because of HIV or other diseases, but because most of them get pregnant when they don't want to, or when they are too young. So that's how I started talking to them about sex education. Then when we saw these posters about HIV, we women started talking to the children about the disease, too, although we have never seen somebody who is has been infected with the virus.

I personally think prevention is better than cure. The prevention is educating these people about what they are letting themselves into by going about with different men and women. I personally tell them, especially the boys, that they can wear condoms, which are readily available to us from our health clinics. We have village health committees, and we are given condoms for family planning, but we still tell the boys to use them to protect themselves from getting HIV. So perhaps if all of us do our own little bits in our own little corners, maybe we can wipe out this epidemic.

Many people here believe that men are made in such a way that they have to be with many women. I think that what we are generally saying is that men have decided to have sex many more times than women. Why women haven't changed men yet is because they think this is what men are supposed to do; it's embedded in the custom. I don't think men need so many women. Most men don't go out to these women because they really love them. They just do it out of habit. I truly believe that women have the power to change men and tell them to be more mature.

Among my sons and their wives I can see that they agree they don't want to catch anything, from gonorrhea to HIV. I can see the men agreeing, because now that it is on television, they are scared. I see them sitting down with their wives, holding on to one woman, and trying to get as much sexual satisfaction as possible from this one woman.

The men or young people who will not listen are the ones we are afraid for. As we have read and seen on the television, this thing spreads so quickly that it's alarming. Supposing a father gets infected. And he has four wives. That means his four wives are infected, and through them a few kids may be infected also.

Let's say only one person within the family has the disease. All other members of the family will be caring for this one. The care, the money, the time, that's the big problem to families like us, who are just making ends meet. You have to buy a lot of drugs, while knowing that this is a wasteful exercise. If it was pneumonia or something else, you think, okay, if I spend so much money in buying drugs, this person will be cured. But we have been told that there is nothing yet to cure HIV. So while you are spending money and time looking after that person, you are thinking, "Oh, I'm just wasting my time. When will he die? When will I be free from all this?" Meanwhile, you cannot kill him, you cannot abandon him. So this is a great problem.

You have to pay to be well. We don't have any free services, no health insurance. So I don't know what the government will be able to do, because right now, for education, they're spending all the money that we have. We don't even have the resources. If HIV becomes a national burden, it will just be too bad. Many people will just die.

Let's face it, if a crisis arrives, we cannot just abandon those of us with HIV. We will have to find a way of caring for them, and we must keep praying that one day the researchers might find a solution to it. This is why I have stressed the point that education for prevention is the best thing that we can do right now.

Adeola Peters

I am thirty-eight years old and I've been married for eleven years. My husband works with the civil service. I completed a higher diploma in secretarial and administrative services, and I work as a conference coordinator.

I have three living children, all girls, who are eleven, ten, and six years old. As of today, I am the only wife of my husband.

I'm not a Muslim; I'm a Christian, but as you know, when your husband is in a comfortable position, anything can happen. I don't pretend to think he wouldn't have girlfriends. I wouldn't say I saw him with one, but I assume that he can have one. It is the vogue. Men feel they should have fun, and there are certain places you don't want to take your wife. When a friend of his is organizing a disco; in African countries, you don't take your wife, because they feel respectable women should not be there. So they have people they go out with. If a man has a girlfriend, before you know it, she might be pregnant. Then the African tradition comes in because once you have a child for someone, automatically you cannot do without the person. So the child can bring you together. That's why I'm saying, as of today I'm the only one. I don't know about tomorrow.

I don't believe that because he is having a girlfriend, I should have a boyfriend. What am I am looking for? My husband takes good care of me. I am not lacking. If it's attention, he gives me attention. But I think there are things that can push a woman out. Women are not wood, we need attention.

As for my knowledge, from what I read in the papers and from a film on HIV, when a woman has sex with a man, she can get the virus. It takes two people to contract it. Kissing is not part of it. It has to be physical, you know, sexual. And I know that they said once you have it, you don't just die immediately. It gradually becomes more serious and it may take a couple of years before you die. You start to feel that you have a headache, or you have a body ache, but now you find out that illness doesn't go away, that it leads to compound illness. I don't know if it's true.

I haven't seen anybody survive or heard of anybody who ever survived it. I saw a film of a Ghanaian girl who didn't survive it. At the last minute, she was very, very lean; like a skeleton.

They say it originates from the United States. In Nigeria we never had something like that, but they say it's because people travel to the America and to European countries. We have many of our people going there to work, some going there for holidays. We can't do anything about that; it's modernization.

I always warn my husband, "Look, if you are going to one of your parties, remember to carry condoms. You know if you die, I don't eat good. The children will suffer. So please remember to carry condoms. Let me die naturally, not from something you have gone out to bring in for me."

He buys condoms. He also used them with me because there was a time I was not ready to be pregnant, and I was not used to all these tablets they said are precautionary measures. He doesn't really like using condoms, but that is what I want. He will say he doesn't really feel comfortable with it, but I don't feel comfortable taking pills. What if I take a pill and die today? He was realistic, so he agreed with me.

Now that HIV has arrived, I think the majority of the men are very cautious. Even those who were carefree before are thinking twice. We have had a reported case of a man who died here from HIV. And since African men are very fearful, I think this will teach them a lesson. We don't have to preach to them. I tell my husband I'm just helping. I'm just reminding him and I'm putting the responsibility on him: "Don't go and get drunk and say you forgot to use it. Don't come into this house and carry nonsense into the house." So he knows and he will be cautious.

Our men today pretend a lot. They will tell you they don't have two wives in the house, but they will go about having girls. HIV will change the culture. It will make them understand that they have to sit with the wife they have known for a long time, and not risk everyone's life. Nobody wants to be looking death in its face like this.

I used to tell my husband, "The day you come into this house and bring a woman and say, 'Listen Adeola, I have decided that this woman is now my wife,' then I know that everything is finished, because I won't have peace of mind." It's not that I'm possessive; I just don't like problems. You start all that nonsense about who did this, and who did that. And he knows it's not just a matter of boasting. I value my peace of mind more than anything. I cannot compromise this. I'll leave and divorce him if I find that my life is endangered.

So I should wait until he brings HIV in and gives it to me before I speak? No, I value my life and my children's more than that. If I say, "Don't do this," and he continues, and I have a feeling that the way he's going endangers us, I'll leave. We came together because we listened to each other and respected each other's point of view. Let him put himself into my shoes. I mean, if he were me, would he take it?

When the fire is coming into the house, you don't want to sit down until you are burned before you start screaming.

Coyin Oke

I'm thirty-five years old and I've been married for nine years. My husband is thirty-five. He is an engineer and lecturer at the Kwara State School of Technology. He is a Christian, but not committed. I am a committed Christian and the only wife.

We have two girls, one is six and a half and the other is five years old. When they are older I will tell them about many diseases, including the one that is spoken of now called HIV. I will tell them to be careful; before they get involved with any man, they should know that the person is serious about them. Since I have put them in the will of the Lord now, I don't think they will rush at anything, especially men.

I've spoken to some people about AIDS. They told me it is an American name which is short for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. But people here don't see it as such. They see A-I-D-S as American Idea of Discouraging Sex.

Some Nigerians I have spoken to believe that there are so many diseases, even worse diseases, that people must worry about here. So this disease Americans have brought, this thing that kills, well, they would die anyhow. No matter how long they live they will die of something, so they don't believe there is AIDS.

I believe this disease exists. In our church they came to show us something about how it affected somebody in Ghana, so I believe there is a new disease, and I would pray not to have it. But, you see, our men, especially the Yorubas, don't cooperate. There's nothing much a woman can do about that. When you tell them to use condom, they begin to feel maybe it's you. They want to know why you should choose for them. A Yoruba woman doesn't dare to even advise her husband about sex or to use condom, if she wants them to stay together.

Some men even believe when they talk with their friends, their wives cannot contribute; that is the place they put women. But things are changing now. Things are changing now. I'm changing also. Before, I wouldn't have left my husband in Ilorin at Kwara State and come to take a job here. Now women are getting to be independent, even the Yorubas. If I see that he's moving a lot with women, and it can affect me, I will just get a divorce. Oh yes, I'm saying I would. Or I would just leave him and say, "Well, I can't have any affair with you since I had this number of children, I think I'm satisfied.

I know how much he earns, and I know how much he's committed to us. He gives us the monthly allowance, takes care of the children, and pays their school fees. If I see that he is lacking in his commitment, I would know definitely that he's spending his money on other things. And no Nigerian woman will do any fun for free. It's for money. When I feel it's getting like that, I'll talk to him. I've caught him once. I paid him a surprise visit and I caught him with a lady. He was surprised and angry that I came without notifying him.

I believe that God can protect me against HIV. He can protect my husband. If God loves me so much, and if He sees that I don't do anything against his wishes, He could, because of the love He has for me, protect my husband. I keep to myself. It's only my husband I'm not sure of. So that's the problem. How can I safeguard myself against that? He wouldn't wear a condom. If I refuse him; that would create a problem. Then he's going to stop coming here; and the children will start asking questions. My parents would also get involved. How would I raise my children? He would divorce me. Maybe I should just start talking to him and saying, "If you want to have an affair, think of us and make sure you wear a condom.

George Orick is a writer and editor for many American newspapers and magazines. For thirteen years he was a writer, producer and news editor for several ABC network news shows in New York, including The ABC Evening News and 20/20. Mr. Orick lives in France.