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Mitigating an elephantine epidemic: gendered space for HIV/AIDS outreach through Namibian conservancies

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Abstract

As the reach of HIV/AIDS continues to devastate communities and create potential pressures on natural resources, conservation organizations have increasingly become involved in education and outreach to address the disease. This paper’s purpose is to investigate how increasing HIV infection rates and AIDS deaths relate to community-based conservation and livelihood strategies in the Caprivi Region of northeastern Namibia, and demonstrate that conservation organizations can play a unique role in combating the disease. As the epidemic is more widespread in the Caprivi than in any other region of the country, local organizations such as Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC) are responding to the disease by integrating it into conservation work. IRDNC’s efforts reflect a particular focus on gender, including changes in the way that HIV/AIDS is discussed in local communities, strategies to promote access to testing and care, and bringing to light the experiences of individuals and families struggling with HIV/AIDS. This approach shows that there are benefits to be gained from approaching HIV/AIDS mitigation through familiar, existing structures such as those of community conservancies in Namibia—especially the ability to circumvent heavy local stigma. Using data collected through participant observation and participatory discussions, this paper demonstrates that conservation programs can positively affect people with HIV/AIDS, highlighting the importance of mainstreaming outreach efforts that address the particular localized manifestations of the disease in the context of natural resource management.

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Notes

  1. Personal communication, field staff, Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), October 2006. By functionally, I mean that in many cases in this area, even women who are married may not live with or expect any financial support from their husbands. Some men have left to seek work in Windhoek or elsewhere, but increasingly local women describe and understand the absence of men as the result of more and more AIDS victims.

  2. IRDNC HIV/AIDS Committee Meeting minutes, 26 May 2004.

  3. These errors were said to include things like not having recorded the ages of all participants, who were all pregnant women as Namibia does not conduct population-based surveys but uses pregnant women visiting antenatal clinics as estimates for national prevalence. While this is a UNAIDS-accepted method and is believed to be generally reflective of national rates, some argue that it can overestimate by up to 25% (Boerma et al. 2003), while others argue it may actually underestimate by 35–65% (Grulich and Kaldor 2002).

  4. Personal communication, multiple individuals who are involved with HIV work from different perspectives in Caprivi, March 2007.

  5. For discussion of the role of local understanding of links between HIV/AIDS and witchcraft, see Smith and Morrison 2006 and Thomas 2006.

  6. Personal communication, HBC worker, Katima Mulilo, August 2006.

  7. Stories about individuals contemplating suicide have also been shared with me by colleagues who had assisted with access to testing in Katima Mulilo and outlying areas.

  8. This connection between girls’ education and a decreased risk of HIV will be further discussed later in the paper.

  9. Personal communication, IRDNC staff member, Kongola, August 2006.

  10. Personal communication, IRDNC field staff member, Katima Mulilo, March 2007.

  11. Obviously this number seems small, but it is self-reported and so is certainly lower than the actual number of individuals who went. To have this many state that that they did go represents progress, however incremental.

  12. Personal observation, male participant, Conservancy Committee Workshop on HIV and AIDS, Katima Mulilo, 2 August 2006.

  13. The UNAIDS 2006 Report on the Global Epidemic, for example, asserts that while little work is actually being done to attack stigmatization accompanying HIV, it is expected that “efforts to improve access to antiretroviral therapy and other HIV-related treatment may prove to be one of the most powerful anti-stigma interventions” (UNAIDS 2006a, p. 200).

  14. This is obviously not an ideal method, but given the familiarity of the social space at the market where the workshop was taking place and the fact that many participants knew each other, participants were comfortable having the community resource monitors (CRMs) write down the answers that they whispered. Of course, participation was fully voluntary, but no one opted not to participate as the women themselves often bring up the subject of HIV and AIDS for discussion and are keen to talk about it and ask questions.

  15. One woman did later mention in discussion that she personally was abstaining from sex, but she seemed to indicate that she was not in a relationship at the time.

  16. For a discussion of men’s assertion of their rights to have sex with their wives on demand and without condoms (research from northern Namibia), see LeBeau et al. 2001.

  17. Personal observation, Crochet Workshop at Mashi Crafts, Kongola, 7 August 2006.

  18. This particular myth seems to stem from a series of demonstrations involving condoms that were supposed to show, in part, that they are very strong and rarely break if properly used. To illustrate its durability, a condom was filled with water. But the lubricant on the latex did not, of course, mix with the water, and its oily nature meant that drops of it appeared to curl up in the water when held in the light.

  19. Personal observation, Crochet Workshop at Mashi Crafts, Kongola, 7 August 2006.

  20. Ibid.

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  1. Department of Regional Economic and Social Development, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, 61 Wilder Street, 500 O’Leary, Lowell, MA, 01854, USA

    Rachel DeMotts

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DeMotts, R. Mitigating an elephantine epidemic: gendered space for HIV/AIDS outreach through Namibian conservancies. Popul Environ 29, 186–203 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-008-0064-y

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