Tag: Swaziland


Rural Youth at BarCamp Swaziland

August 27th, 2009 — 8:00am

Katrina Heppler of envisionGood.tv and I pose with the amazing young people from rural areas who helped with BarCamp Swaziland. They were sponsored by YouthAssets.org, who empowers youth in Southern Africa through technology, especially those heading households. YouthAssets sent this group airtime via SMS on their mobile phones, which they received in their villages and then sold to pay bus fare to the conference. The youth ran the conference registration, and helped us document it with Flip video cameras. The 12-year-old, Msimisi, who helped me, was chosen to attend BarCamp Swaziland and learn more about technology because he has hooked up a solar panel to the thatch roof of his family’s hut – to power a radio. At the end of BarCamp Swaziland, we asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, and he said — an engineer.

Note: What an honor to work with envisionGood.tv to document BarCamp Swaziland and SOCAP ’09!

38 comments » | Africa, Swaziland

VIDEO: Gcina Dube on HIV/AIDS in Swaziland

August 27th, 2009 — 7:27am

“It was AIDS that killed her, not the witchcraft stuff they were talking about.”

We went to Hluti to visit Phindile, an 18-yr-old head-of-household who advises YouthAssets. As we were hanging out in front of the school, Gcina, a Swazi man in his twenties who works for YouthAssets and was accompanying us to the rural areas, told the story of a local family where the husband went to work in the mines in South Africa, came back and infected his wife with HIV, and then died. The wife was still healthy. As custom requires, the brother of the husband married his late brother’s wife. He then became infected and died, and then a third brother married the wife, and eventually died as well. The family thought the men were dying from witchcraft, due to the achievements of the family. Finally the wife died as well.

Gcina says: “A lot of people in Swaziland know AIDS is there, but they just pretend as if it’s not there, even though it’s killing us.”

2 comments » | Africa, Swaziland

The Highest HIV Rate in the World: Beyond Statistics #1

August 27th, 2009 — 4:50am

Swaziland has the highest HIV rate in the world, with estimates of the adult prevalence rate ranging from 26%-38%. Before I left for BarCamp Swaziland, in between buying batteries and packing tripods and making sure I had enough DV tapes, I needed to try to wrap my mind around this reality. What did it really mean to live in a country so devastated by HIV?  I wanted to know why the rate was so high.

I read an audit of HIV/AIDS policies in Swaziland funded by the WK Kellogg Foundation. On page 12, it listed factors fueling the epidemic in Southern Africa. Economic and civil war-induced migration, especially migration to work in gold and platinum mines in Botswana and South Africa, is a key factor in spreading disease. Unsafe sex and multiple partners remain a common cause of infection, as are dirty needles and poor health delivery systems.

Phindile, a smiling, broad-faced young woman with close-cropped hair, is the oldest one on her rural homestead and helps to care for her siblings. Her parents have both died. An older brother works in the city and sends money “sometimes.” As an advisor to YouthAssets.org, Phindile helps to counsel other orphans who head households. Largely due to the AIDS epidemic, there are over 15,000 orphan-headed households in the small kingdom of Swaziland, about 10% of families.  

We interview her in Hluti, a rural village near the South African border,  on a red-dirt path shared by cows and goats in front of her school. Many Hluti men cross the border to work in South African mines, where many prostitutes are HIV positive. Phindile clutches a notebook close to her chest in a shy girlish way, faded paper cutouts of women in haute couture dresses pasted to the cover. 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” we ask. Continue reading »

83 comments » | Africa, Swaziland

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