HIV and STI's

Pick and Pay grocery store is celebrating their fourth anniversary. Like many of our big department stores and malls, it was built in the last 5 years. At the entrance to the store flaps an overhead banner proclaiming “Happy 4^th Birthday” and music reverberates through out the store and into the parking lot from a live rock band ensconced in front of the check out counters. It is Saturday and the aisles are crowded with shoppers. As I make my way through the vegetable section, it sounds like they are singing about HIV and STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections). I listen attentively and decide they are singing in a local language and it just sounds like HIV and STI. Then all of a sudden, as I am selecting a chunk of cheddar cheese, I distinctly hear “male circumcision” and I realize the chorus really is about HIV and STIs. It is a prevention song. Drama, story, songs and dance are all traditional methods of teaching in Zambia and are used to promote health education messages.

Zambia is promoting male circumcision to decrease HIV transmission. If men are circumcised, transmission of some bacterial sexual infections is reduced. And transmission of HIV from women to men is reduced as well. Now there’s something to sing about in a city where 1 in 4 adults is HIV positive!

I have made it through the check out and one of the men standing near the band at the exit offers me a pamphlet. The band starts again and this time I recognize the song, “Blessed be your Name,” and I think about Zambia being a Christian nation and the lack of discomfort with things Christian in the market place. The song seems appropriate, reminding listeners that regardless of the circumstances of life, God is in control. I know it is hard to fathom anything like this in an America grocery store, but it is a part of every day life here.

I find it rather lovely to think people are being encouraged to take charge of their health and that a praise song in the market place might just give hope to someone who already has HIV/AIDS and may be filled with fear and dread. “When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say…blessed be your name…”

Terra and my favorite walk in Sunningdale