Fixing the Problem: Part 2

Personal notes:
Lockdown in prison today, no acess for us, so I'm blogging. I will be in Mpumalanga for most of the week, trying to gain a spot on the South African wrestling team in freestyle and greco. I have no idea what to expect, but it will be tough. As always I love emails and comments, but it might be some time before I have computer acess again.

‘Does HIV cause Aids? Aids is an acquired immune deficiency syndrome. I don’t believe it is a sensible thing to ask if a virus causes a syndrome. A single virus cannot cause a syndrome. A virus causes a disease. Aids is a syndrome … including 29 different diseases. When you ask the question, does HIV cause Aids, the question is: does a virus cause a syndrome? It can’t.’
- South African President Thabo Mbeki

If you do not realize why the above statement is re idiotic, please read up on HIV/AIDS before reading the rest of this post. (In short, HIV does cause AIDS!)

If part 1 of FTP is brutal right-wing conservatism (better policing) part 2 is the epitome of left-wing liberalism. Education. Educated people make better decisions. I have a double stake in promoting this education: as a teacher by profession, I've been trained (indoctrinated?) to value education. As a worker for the YMCA, I've chosen education as my volunteer labor. My main job involves going into schools and prisons, helping programs that teach people self-control and good decision making skills. I've also gone on Christain radio and offered "advice" to the listeners. Education rules.

Lack of knowledge is killing South Africa. Not just intellectually or financially, but also physically. While our doctors work their fingers to the bone combatting AIDS, lobbying for cheap antiretroviral drugs (the drugs that keep HIV+ people alive)and and running education programs our polititians make stupid statements like the one above. (Stay tuned for the 'politics' part of FTP, when I will discuss more stupid politicans). Idiots. Mind boggling, rage-inducing idiots. It would be hilarous it if weren't so tragic. AIDS is a miserable way to die. When our politicans act backwards and stupid that makes other countries want to avoid dealing with us.

Educatiors fight against more than just lack of knowledge. We fight against "culture". It is always a sensitive subject, trying to change someone's historical or traditional beliefs, but sometimes protection of life must rule over cultural ideas. It is NOT okay for a man to have sexual rights over his wife or girlfriend (ie she can't say no) in an HIV-flooded land. It is NOT okay for people to believe that raping a virgin will take your AIDS away. (Of course, people who choose to follow those cultural ideas conveniently forget that traditionally, black African culture was sexually conservative.)

There actually are many education progarms in South Africa, working with mixed sucess. Reading over questionaires filled in by students in low-income areas, most kids seem to understand the basics of AIDS. This makes me happy. Prisons are flooded with education programs. Even the government spends money educating. The YMCA seeks teach people "how to think" rather than just how to act. We target gang leaders in prison, and train "peer educators" in schools. We teach students how to deal with their emotions, differentiate fact from oppinion, say no to peer pressure, and strongly suggest abstinence until marriage. Many groups follow the ABC plan in AIDS education: Abstain, Be faithful to one partner, use a Condom. with each step safer than the one below it. Slowly, painfully slowly, messages get through. People change and make new lives for themselves.

Of course, the problems with education are two-fold:
1) There is dispute over what is "good" to teach. (Example: do we emphasize condom use or complete abstinence?) I've been told by medical students that professors made fun of them for not experimenting sexually. This seems silly- all religous or moral reasons aside, there are damn good MEDICAL reasons to be sexually conservative in Africa. Not all ideas are good ones, and not all knoweldge is helpful. South Africa would be a much better place if no one knew how to make Cryztal Meth.

2) Knowing something and doing it are two different things. South Africans are notorious for not acting on their knowledge, or for ignoring obvious truth. Thabo MBeki HAS to now what the global consensus on AIDS is. Willful ignorance is easy enough, especially when surrounded by so much real ignorance.

Prisoners are more than willing to tell long, reasonable stories about the mistakes they made in their past, the wrong paths they went down, the wasted years, and how they are changed people now. Once they get out onto the streets (or even out of the YMCA meeting) it's a different story. Many of them have been in prison repeatedly. Who is to say this stint, this class, makes a difference? There are social and economic reasons why people reoffend, of course, and we need to deal with those also, but you can't underestimate the willingness, or unwillingness, of human beings to make good choices for themselves.

Talking to medical students in South Africa, they are driven to total frustration by the unwillingness of patients to follow simple doctors orders. "Take these antiretrovirals, at X dosage, at Y time each day, and it will extend and drastically improve your life." And the patients take them sparodically, only when they happen to feel like it, and then the ARV's do nothing except make you sicker. How can you help people that won't take a bloody pill to curb horrible suffering? Tuberculosis, almost unknown in the west, is reaching epidemic proportions in South Africa, partly because people don't take their medicine to completion, creating drug-resistant TB.

I could go on and on... How do you educate against laziness? Against a person who would rather beg than get a real job and contribute to society? Live off government handouts rather than make an honest living? The lack of commitment to doing a good job, being punctual, backing up your commitments, ideas we take for granted in North America, are comically lacking in Africa. Really. Not all South Africans are like this, of course: many, many people are hard-working, honest, and dedicated. However, negative trends are easy to see. These are not the rants of a crazy Ann Coltour-type conservative. These are honest observations made by many people from different racial, social and political backgrounds. You really can teach a man to fish, but you can't make him get on the boat.

Education is great. Education is necessary. Education is hope for the people of Africa. But without motivation, Eucation will fail. We must continue to educate the people of South Africa. However, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that it will solve all problems by itself.