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Fish soup vs AIDS pandemic joke will annihilate us
2007-10-04 10:13:51
By Chris Joe
I was amused last weekend when I read in one of the local Kiswahili newspapers about the people of Ukerewe in Mwanza region telling the Prime Minister Edward Lowassa that the cause of fast spreading HIV and AIDS in the district was fish, or rather, the consumption of fish and fish soup.
Yes, it sounds funny and you can even laugh at it as the biggest joke. You can describe it as the lamest excuse of the century to justify the irresponsible habit of indulging in wanton and unsafe sex for the people of the district.
You may think (and I also think so too), that these people in the Ukerewe archipelago are not serious about fighting the AIDS pandemic.
Fish is plentiful in Ukerewe, and why not? The district is an island, which means it is surrounded by water, the Lake Victoria waters and fish is the main kitoweo for the people of the islands.
So what, Unguja and Pemba and Mafia, to mention only a few, are also islands and fish is the main kitoweo for the people living in those islands. However, it has never been claimed that AIDS prevalence in these islands is as high or higher than in Ukerewe.
Available statistics indicate that HIV and AIDS spread in Ukerewe runs at an alarming rate of 20 per cent, against the national spread rate pegged at seven per cent., almost three times over.
Reflectively, the article in the local paper reminded me of some research I read some many years ago to the effect that people who eat a lot of fresh fish are sexually very active.
I wish I could share with you where I read this research, but the computer in my head is very slow because of an accumulation of too much data.
However, I remember that the report did not say whether they meant fresh water fish or otherwise.
This thought opened a floodgate of other reflections that took me far back to my childhood.
I come from the shores of one of the three great lakes of our country in the south west where fish is also the main kitoweo (side dish) for the people in the area. The Lake is known for its most delicious fresh water fish in the wider world.
As we grew up we were made to understand that the head of a fish is to be partaken by the father of the house only, and if you accidentally or stubbornly went for the head of the fish when the father of the house was around, you were rudely and painfully reminded of this social obligation.
Women, like children, were not supposed to eat the head of fish without express permission of the father of the house.
We took is as a social norm and we were supposed to abide by it. Sometimes a grown-up person would confide in us that if you eat the head of a fish you will be clever, bright and active (not sexually, or maybe that was what they meant), we never asked questions.
It was later; when I began thinking independently that I began asking myself questions I couldn’t ask before.
For example, if the head of the fish contained what made people bright and clever and active, why did the elders refuse us children that part of fish, I mean the head, since we were going to school? Didn’t we deserve it more than the elder people?
Again, as I grew up further, I learnt that it was all because of the old male chauvinistic attitudes of society, which also prohibited women, especially pregnant women from eating eggs and that the father of the house was supposed to have the best of everything in the house, including the fish head. Unfair arrangement, which I suggest should be scrapped off in our present society.
But whatever the case, to blame the consumption of fish for the spread of HIV and AIDS because fish supposedly increases their sexual appetite is irrelevant and irresponsible.
It renders the national exercise to fight the scourge irrelevant, unless the people of Ukerewe want the government to ban fresh fish eating.
In any case, if they believe that fish soup consumption aggravates the spread of HIV and AIDS in their district, they can ask their district council to enact a by-law making fish soup eating a criminal offence. Come to think of it, they don`t even need a by-law, they can simply decide to stop eating fish.
The Prime Minister said in Makete he was told that the high rate of HIV and AIDS spread in the district was caused by the cold weather.
It is fish soup in Ukerewe, in Kagrera it will be matoke, in Kilimanjaro it will be mtori , and mnazi (palm wine) along the coast and a lot of other ridiculous things in other parts of the country.
I am trying to show the absurdity of giving an excuse of fish soup for the spread of HIV and AIDS in Ukerewe. The people of Ukerewe are making a mockery of the national campaign to tackle the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
The anti-AIDS national campaign has won international praise for its effective and practical strategies that address the pandemic.
But Tanzanians are known for taking serious and even dangerous things lightly and for granted. The best example is the HIV and AIDS pandemic.
When the scourge was first identified in the country and people were called upon to abstain from unsafe sex or to use a condom, they came up with a lot of nonsensical phrases.
Inzi kufia kwenye kidonda ni halali, they would say, meaning that to die of AIDS was like a fly dying when feeding itself on a wound; or how do you take a refreshing bath with your clothes on, meaning that having sex with a condom was like taking a bath with clothes on.
It is sad to note that even after almost every Tanzanian having lost a relative or friend to the pandemic, some people would still consider it as a big joke.
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