so it's 8:30 am now and i am sneaking in a bit of internet prior to our 9:00 start- very busy schedule here right off the bat- here's our focus so far:
our first day was devoted to the situation of AIDS in africa. how initial approaches, presuming the aids epedemic in africa is due to promiscuity and lack of basic awareness, emphasize abstinence and if more progressive, condom use-
our discussion was about the economic factors that put so many women and children in particular in environments where they are at risk of contracting aids, and nutritional factors that make people likely to contract once exposed and likely to have a rapid onset- the cycle of poverty and aids that make aids so epidemic in a place like africa. so i guess it's a difference between looking only at the actual act through which people catch aids, assuming that it is a matter of choice, and an approach that looks at the context- why are people sexually exposed, why once exposed are they so likely to contract the disease, why it progresses so quickly-.
For example in poverty with limited nutrition the immune system starts out weakened, so the virus is much more easily spread - if a woman's husband dies of aids she may lose rights to property, nutrition further declines, and may resort to prostitution to support her family- further increasing her risks. similarily the many orphans that have resulted from the epidemic are starting from a weakened immune system and are vulnerable to sexual exploitation or contracting for sex to support themselves.
More appropriate approaches to the epidemic continue to train in basic awareness of the disease, how it's spread, and how to avoid it, but also are economic/nutrition based- giving widows means of livelyhood, orphans adequate protection/nutrition, and tactics such as bio-intensive farming. the latter has been our focus for the past couple of days.
bio intensive farming is a kind of organic farming that uses compost and raised beds - it is labor intensive at first with a lot of work going into making the compost and triple digging the earth, rotating it with the compost, raising up beds so that you create healthy soil and more surface area for planting- but the payoff is multiplied output on the same tract of land, healthy soil producing more nutritious crops, and no need for the expense and side effects of chemical fertilizers or pestisides.
we have been out at a neighboring village which has an agricultural school, demo garden, and the head of the school heads our sustainable ag. program. we spent a morning making a compost heap and a day today making a raised bed-