Bostone Globe
Teaching safe sex, Ugandan-style'Aunts' who used to join couples on their wedding nights, now dispense health advice
By Rachel Scheier, Globe Correspondent, 10/28/2003 KAMPALA, Uganda -- A must-have item for female Makerere University undergraduates this fall, in addition to the peasant blouse and the miniscule Nokia cellphone, is a string of waist beads, an accessory with such seductive powers it is said to inspire cheating boyfriends to reform. The magic beads, known as obutiti in Luganda, the local tongue, were originally meant "to be worn for your husband and your husband alone," explained Phoebe Nakibuule Mukasa, a retired schoolteacher who is considered a local expert on the traditional etiquette of love and marriage -- a Ugandan Dr. Ruth Westheimer. "This so-called modernization has spoiled many things," said Mukasa, echoing a view that is common among an older generation of Ugandans who pine for the orderly social customs of the past. Traditionally, Mukasa said, a young girl's senga, or paternal aunt, trained her in all matters of love and marriage prior to her wedding night. A young bride learned which soft, cotton clothes with which to bathe her husband, even the right words to whisper intimately in his ear. Now sengas such as Mukasa are making a comeback among the women of Kampala, who, like their contemporary counterparts everywhere, find navigating the pitfalls of romance an increasingly bewildering task. Today, professional, cellphone-wielding sengas cruise college dormitories, beauty salons, even wedding showers at posh hotels, for customers who often pay handsomely for their love potions, magic beads and tips. The "aunties" have become so popular recently that health officials and cultural leaders are trying to harness the old tradition as a tool to stop the spread of AIDS. The idea is that if young women -- and men -- will listen to sengas on the art of erotic techniques and relationship tricks, they will also listen to them teach HIV prevention and other practical sex-education advice. "AIDS has spread because people have moved away from tradition," said Mukasa, a plump 70-year-old with a bouffant hairdo and copper bangles. In the kingdom of Buganda, the ancient monarchy from which Uganda derives its name, it was taboo for parents to talk with their children about sex. So the task fell to the father's sister, usually one who was old and wise and had stopped producing children herself. She was responsible for shepherding a young girl through puberty. When it came time for marriage, the senga counseled a young bride on how to behave with her husband and keep a happy home. Tradition held that she would even accompany the young couple on their wedding night, Mukasa said, "to make sure things went well." Of course, times have changed. Most girls in Uganda's cities and towns learn about sex long before marriage, while away at boarding school or watching satellite TV. "Children have become more and more educated, and they don't want to go to the villages anymore," Mukasa said. "And parents no longer want to send their kids to the aunts." To help fill the void, Mukasa hosts a two-hour talk show every Sunday afternoon on Radio Simba, one of Kampala's popular Luganda-language stations. It covers topics ranging from women's health (Which herbs ease menstrual cramps?) to relationships (Are miniskirts to blame for philandering husbands?) In private consultations and at monthly seminars held in a ramshackle theater in a particularly potholed section of town, Mukasa administers more frank advice. During a recent session, women, and a handful of men, crowded into the dilapidated red plush seats clutching notebooks and pens. A woman in a polka-dotted head scarf raised her hand. "How do you keep your husband from going to prostitutes?" she asked. Mukasa said that a wife must behave properly to keep a man happy in the home. She must learn to vary her cooking, not to nag him and, of course, how to please him in bed. She said she believes that the failure of modern, educated Ugandan women to learn such traditional marital etiquette has contributed to infidelity and the spread of AIDS. "If a man doesn't find pleasure in sex, he will go somewhere else where he can enjoy it," she said. In Uganda, 1.5 million people are said to be living with HIV. Life expectancy has dwindled to 42. It is nearly impossible to find a Ugandan who has not lost a relative or close friend to the disease. Robert Ssebunnya, a blue-suited Kampala businessman, said he believes that sengas are the perfect vehicle to educate young people about AIDS. "We want to retain our cultural values," said Ssebunnya, who, until recently, also served as health minister under the king of Buganda, who still exercises great influence as head of Uganda's largest tribe. Ssebunnya has won government funding for a plan to train a number of working sengas in the basics of AIDS prevention -- abstinence, fidelity and condom use -- who would pass on the lessons to youths in villages and schools. His plan also includes a "senga manual," which would offer guidelines on such topics as how boys and girls should behave at parties and guarding against premarital sex. But, when he presented the idea recently at Makerere, Kampala's largest university, he was booed. Students argued that AIDS education in Africa calls more a more contemporary approach. There is a widespread belief among Ugandans that modernity and moral decadence is to blame for social maladies such as AIDS, said Carolyne Nakazibwe, a 28-year-old journalist who writes a popular weekly column called "Sex Talk" for The Monitor, a Kampala newspaper. "A lot of men believe we have a lot of HIV because women dress indecently, which is, of course, ridiculous." Still, reviving old cultural practices like virginity testing for young girls has become fashionable elsewhere in Africa in the age of AIDS. Two years ago, King Mswati III of Swaziland issued a five-year ban on sex for young women and ordered that virgins identify themselves by wearing a traditional red tassel around their necks. Such "return-to-culture" approaches to addressing the epidemic have been criticized by those who argue that many such traditions only further oppress African women, which ultimately fuels rather than curbs the spread of the disease. But the Medical Research Council, an AIDS research organization in Uganda, recently found that a study using sengas to teach sex education to adolescent girls showed promising results. Brent Wolff, a behavioral scientist, said researchers in the study deliberately did not try to tinker with any of the sengas' traditional teachings. "Otherwise," he said, "you are fighting a culture battle that ends up destroying the very vehicle you are trying to take advantage of." And in Uganda, where many women still customarily kneel as a show of respect to their elders, tradition still holds powerful sway. "Many girls get into relationships and find that their men are more old-fashioned than they thought," Nakazibwe said. Twenty-something law students who scoff outwardly at the Helen Gurley Brown-style attitudes of Mukasa and others, she said, will still flock to the campus cafeteria to hear a senga hold forth. "Sex is primitive," Mukasa said. "All men, educated or not, are the same when it comes to sex." � Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney SpearsSend instant messages to anyone on your contact list with MSN Messenger 6.0. 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