Desk Unchained

I am on my way home from my first trip to the field on behalf of Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM). Janna has been in the field quite regularily but due to the nature of my position of building a lobbying and advocacy department it has not been necessary for me to be in the field up to this point in my mandate.
I am accompanying Elizabeth our new WUSC - World University Service of Canada volunteer who is here for four months to work on gender and HIV/AIDS issues for FUM as she does some field work on those topics. Yesterday we went to visit some farmers. It was a really interesting day and I was impressed with the knowledge about HIV and about AIDS and the differences and connection between the two. The discussions were done with males and females separately and even simple questions like what do you do each day and who makes the decisions on different matters had different conflicting answers between the two groups. Practices that I had been told no longer occur are still going on according to these rural farmers who I would assume would be best placed to know. One of these practices is called fisi and it is when another man is brought in to impregnate a woman who isn’t getting pregnant with her husband. As well we were told that kuchotsa fumbi is still a common cultural practice. This is where a man is brought in when a girl begins to menstruate in order to initiate her into sex. Both of these practices were described to us when Elizabeth asked about what kind of cultural activities may spread the transmission of HIV. It was also clearly stated to us that men often have multiple female partners in a kind of informal polygamy but that it is not possible for a women to ask her husband to wear a condom as it will imply that they (the woman) have been unfaithful. The men stated to us that if the woman asked them to wear a condom they would see it as a challenge to whether they (the men) have been unfaithful. So despite the fact that everyone stated that formal polygamy is very rare (it once was widely practiced) informal still occurs yet people won’t wear condoms because that implies unfaithfulness! The majority of Malawians are intensely Christian with many of them following evangelical and born again denominations and therefore they all state that polygamy is wrong and that condoms are not needed as all that is required is abstaining until marriage and then faithfulness within marriage.

To be continued...