The Bench

On a bench outside the Operating Theatre sit a group of young men in their late teens or early twenties.  They come every day sometimes 10 or more, never less than one, to get circumcised.  There is a profound look of concern and anxiety on each face  as he clutches a prepared booklet of handwritten instructions that tell him  what's to come, theoretically reducing his panic.  It's a big business here in Buhoma at Bwindi Community Hospital, and I was curious why young men at the beginning of their sexual experience would wait hours for a circumcision.

The bench

USAID, sponsored by the US Government, pays the hospital to do circumcisions, having done the research to show that circumcised men don't spread the HIV virus nearly as much as those who aren't.  In fact, the rate of HIV infection in Uganda is now 6.7%, down from I don't know what.  Here's what Jane described.

At the height of the epidemic, whole families would be affected.  It was not unusual for a 14 year old girl to be left an orphan, having the care of 6 or 7 younger children, all affected, as was she.  Spreading the disease even more were those who were infected and choosing to partner with those who were negative, as if somehow they would be made well again. There were so many dead that there was no one to bury them.  As a result, the villages created groups of men and women who were willing to be a sort of burial squad...the Bataka, or "people of the land".  They buried those who died in shallow graves in the fields, no formal graveyards and no formal services, there were too many and there was no time.

The Bataka are used now in community outreach to contact the young men, telling them the stories, which they well know, of the AIDS virus and what it does.  So their serious expressions tell not only their immediate concern, but also about their sense of responsibility, not only for their own lives, but for those who they love and will love in the future.  This is a serious business.

The irony is that yesterday, together with all of those on their tea break (every day at 11:15 and it's HOT tea) I watched CNN and the US Supreme Court debate over same sex marriages.  Everyone in the room looked puzzled and eyeballed me as if I could explain this craziness.  They told me that in Uganda the only reason to get married was when you wanted children, so they didn't understand at all why there was a fuss...people of the same sex can't have biological children, so why worry about marriage at all?  I responded that I thought it was a waste of resources to have the debate, that people should be able to do what they wanted, and they thought that was pretty funny too.

Today's picture is of my bed here at the Monkey Guest House