Poor Poor Mr. Condom
I was informed yesterday that the man who invented condoms was a Russian whose name was “Condom” and he forgot to put his condoms in the refrigerator so he died of AIDS. I had been invited to teach about HIV/AIDS to a group of about 30 young people who were having a religious retreat at the Roman Catholic Mission. I knew it would be a challenge to tread lightly on the subject of condoms and family planning, and I had devised a strategy of asking questions and emphasizing that the only sure way to avoid the disease was abstinence. I didn’t count on the fact that the kids would start a barrage of questions and unsubstantiated, hostile convictions (for example white men invented condoms but they only work for people who have access to refrigerators to keep them cool, so they are useless in Africa), expect me to magically know answers to vague questions such as “why do women give birth prematurely and have miscarriages,” and respond to claims that birth control makes you sterile for life. Despite the mis-information brought by my audience, I think I managed to get the vital message across: if you don’t want AIDS don’t have unprotected sex with people whose status you do not know. If you don’t trust condoms, don’t use them but don’t have sex. I must have repeated variations of these messages about 20 times over the course of an hour. It didn’t help that I had been notified that I was needed to teach the AIDS seminar 5 minutes before they wanted me to start. I kept finding myself responding to condom questions and praying the priests wouldn’t choose that moment to walk by the classroom. I kept an eye out for them and planned to say “Many people choose not to use condoms due to their religious beliefs,” very loudly just to be safe. It will be very telling whether I am invited back to teach the next group of young Catholics.

More Names
I have a couple more names to add to the list: Sickola and Moody. The search for a “Fungus” continues.

Nighttime at a Glance
Sometimes as I sit by candlelight I imagine what’s going on in the homes around my village. Young kids put the cows to bed and head home to their one meal of ugali (stiff boiled corn flour) and fried greens, cooked on a firewood stove in a smoke-filled kitchen, digging into the communal bowls with greedy fingers. Fat mission employees finish off their beers, then clasp hands in prayer before digging their forks into slabs of meat and rice. Elementary school teachers tune into the news on the radio while they stir their ugali on charcoal stoves, then study for their high school exams late into the night. The small-shop owners sell portions of cooking oil and salt to customers cloaked in colorful kangas emerging from the night into the glow of the shop’s kerosene lantern. Women who have slaved all day collecting firewood, hauling water, cooking, farming and cleaning, wrestle unwilling children into wash basins to scrub the dirt of evening playtime from their skin, then slather oil on their shining shivering bodies. The hard-working men arrive home from the fields or pastures to a steaming bucket bath and a meal. The lazy men are still at the club where local brew will be served until 10 pm, and then they will stumble home in the dark. Children will squeeze 7 at once into a little room on bamboo-frame beds or grass mats. If there is a funeral or a wedding, large groups will be up late into the night, crying, singing, drinking, telling stories. And I sit with my book and my journal, relaxing to the familiar tunes of American and Latin music or strumming my guitar, waiting for a pot of potatoes to boil.