Tradition, Poverty, Media and Abuse: Rubbing shoulders with HIV/AIDS.

Publisher’s Foreword: This author offers an unwavering and brave insight into the role that adults, parents, people in power, tradition and the media all play in exposing young people to HIV/AIDS. The author reveals a rather troubling and often ignored perspective of how adults and people in positions of authority are pressuring young people into, or taking advantage of the economic vulnerability of young people to force them, into sex, thus exposing them to possible infection with HIV. The writer also sheds light on the even more disturbing vulnerability of young people to acts of incest, at the hands of their own parents. Finally, the author lays blame on the Media, and the young people themselves, for their increased vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. This entry was the 2nd prize winner of HAZ’s 2007 World AIDS Day Student Essay Contest.

TRADITION, POVERTY, MEDIA AND ABUSE: RUBBING SHOULDERS WITH HIV/AIDS

HIV is a virus that causes AIDS. In full it is Human Immunodeficiency Virus. AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a disease that greatly weakens a person’s ability to resist infection. And talking about my vulnerability is talking about how it affects me in all angles; socially, economically and educationally, due to some undesirable facts including poverty, child abuse, human traffic and culture. Of which, I consider these facts as the “devil’s master pieces”. Meant to deceive the human race, of which again youths are the targeted victims. I hereby open my revelation of these facts!!!

While poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic are reinforcing and rubbing each other’s shoulders, creating room for the potentials of famine’s new levels. Child sexual abuse is the most prominent fact contributing to our vulnerability to this deadly pandemic. Men and women are roaring like lions at the youths. They are both playing a big role in this, right, centre, left, where-ever I turn to, it’s the same story all over. “Sugar mummies” and “sugar daddies” are ready to serve the devil by sexually abusing the youths. Due to the poverty the unemployed youth are pressured into indulging in sexual activities namely homosexuality and prostitution. Honestly what would become of our youths yet there is poverty all over. It seems there is no option for the youth who are suffering the consequences of poverty. They need goods, water and shelter, but what about their health? Food for thought dear friends. This sounds so pathetic.

I as a youth am vulnerable to this deadly pandemic because of the sexually greedy elders. As I mentioned earlier on, right, center and left we don’t have anywhere to go. We don’t have a strong adequate shoulder to lean on, not at all. I picture a young girl who needs a certain advice from the so-called man of God, who in turn strikes me with a rod. Surely the world has come to an end.

Day to day I see drama, in the streets. Young people being offered heaven and earth by old, grey haired women and men. For instance, cell phones, cash and cards, blindly they accept, but at the end of the day they are meant to pay back all these offers. Obviously the cost is definitely your innocence. Vulnerability is increasing here. Youths are suffering brutality and humiliation.

Yes! Indeed, I am vulnerable to HIV as a youth. He wakes up hypnotized the moment they feel like satisfying his feelings, let alone he is my father.

However, sticking blindly to tradition increase my vulnerability to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Some of these detrimental traditions are; crime compensation, gender inequality and impromptu marriages. Lets open up a case on crime compensation. Young girls are being given away to old men as compensation objects, well-known in shona as “kuripa ngozi”. While on the other hand there is no gender equality, whereby the wives become the husband’s property. Women are said to be submissive to their husbands, hence they have no say on sexual matters.

Youths are also ignorant to things like HIV tests, they regard it as taboo. Instead of abstaining they also indulge in sexual activities, before marriage. This is due to peer pressure amongst the youth.

Communication is one aid to the decrease of the vulnerability of the youths to the deadly pandemic. Young people tend to become autistic when it comes to talking about AIDS and its facts, with their parents. And sometimes parents do not tolerate such conversations at all. Teachers then tend to play that role as parents, but all the same, some of them are “sell-outs”. They follow the statement “do as I say, not as I do”. They abuse us here and there.

Media! Well, well here we are with the big fish. Newspapers, televisions, radios and magazines sometimes influence youths negatively. I greatly criticize the issue of advertising of contraceptives such as condoms.

These adverts only consider their marketing but not the actual facts. They do not state the risks involved. They just state that condoms are available while are not 100% safe. Does my vulnerability end?

Youths also do not take up their responsibilities as tomorrow’s future. They tend to become narrow minded at the end of the day they are involved in unbecoming activities such as drinking and drug abuse. They end up sodomizing one another and raping each other.

The education department has played its part. Now its our duty to think before we act. Lets be responsible. Good things come to those who wait. Not forgetting the constitution, which has to pass a bill concerning the sexual abuse issue.

My World Of Entrapment

Publisher’s Foreword: Whether it’s a true deeply personal impression that life has so brutally confronted her with, or a masterful and brilliantly written fictional essay designed to grip the reader, this is a stunning piece of work by a gifted teen. Her essay speaks directly to “vulnerability” and “entrapment” and leaves no doubt that the cruel world of AIDS has forced a young child to become an adult far too early. We pray that she is not the child she speaks of in the essay and realize how much work lies ahead of us in supporting our young people so they will avoid this wicked virus. This essay was one of two 1st-Prize winners of HAZ’s 2007 World AIDS Day Student Essay Contest.

Download PDF Version of this essay
Read the other 1st Prize Winning Essay: “A Struggle To Survive“.
Read the 2nd Prize Winning Essay: “Tradition, Poverty, Media And Abuse“.

Cold blooded face, blue lips; this was once the woman I called mother. I could not blame her for lying there, I blamed the world, the sick world we lived in. Looking at her, I knew that everybody was vulnerable, even me. Even the expensive coffin she lay in it did not resemble her life of hardship.

Father was a kind man, could not even hurt a fly. Even mother knew that. Her life was not exciting as everybody thought it was, but not until she met John. Oh! John yes. I remembered him my mother’s play-boy as she would put it. I hardly could believe it that mother, my own mother could cheat on my father. Well that is how it all began, that is exactly where our lives took a different turn.

Mother felt guilty each time she looked in the eyes of the man she “had” once loved, a man who knew nothing of her adultery. One day in February mother fell sick. Hearing about the terrible disease HIV/AIDS I told her to go for a test and of-course she was tested positive.

My mother was not a role model I would take, no! Not at all. Mother felt guilty and so decided to run away from my father taking my sister Mary and I. We live in a shack as people would say, from riches to rags. Life became hard on us and every night I could hear mother tossing and turning and I felt pity for her.

The money she had stolen from my dad had run out. As a mother, I would have expected her to find a job even if it meant being a janitor, but no, my mother loved the rich life and so became a prostitute, probably feeling guilty about her status.

The disease had taken my mother’s life; not just hers but mine as well. Peers or other people whom I thought cared tried to influence me into being like my mother. I didn’t want to sleep around for my money. I wanted to earn it the easy way – education.

Looking back at what my life had been. I realized that the world I am living in is a world of entrapment indeed. Many youths are vulnerable to AIDS, I am vulnerable also and none of us seem to listen.

Peers and people around you can make one vulnerable to the disease because people either make you or break you. The choices you pick always have an impact on one’s future. I learned that the hard way being left alone.

The economic situation at home or even in a country can make one vulnerable to the disease, not caring at all about future plans and thus, makes them indulge into risky sexual behavior.

Many a time we hear about AIDS on the television, on the radio and we even read about it. My mother ignored all this. Instead of her peers leading her the right way they led her to a world of death.

Everybody needs to hear that one should not only choose the right person, but be the right person. Set examples for your peers to follow because one either makes their life or breaks it. Looking at my past experience, we need a generation that will be honest and stand together because where there is unity there is power.

I remembered that day looking back at the coffin. I decided to begin a new life. I never blamed my mother for anything. In fact, I give her my everything. So anybody can be vulnerable, just take care of yourself.

Read the other 1st Prize Winning Essay: “A Struggle To Survive“.
Read the 2nd Prize Winning Essay: “Tradition, Poverty, Media And Abuse“.

Next Page »