Over the course of the last four weeks, I’ve heard a lot of really unbelievable myths that surround the HIV/AIDS issue in South Africa and Malawi. I thought I would share some of these myths with you so that I can give you an idea of the challenges that we’re facing.

HIV/AIDS was created in a laboratory in the United States:

The belief is that Americans created the virus, and then came over to Africa to infect as many Africans as possible. As a result, many locals are suspicious of any westerners looking to come into their village for HIV testing.

If you become infected with HIV, you can get rid of the infection by having sex with someone else:

This is known as the “hot potato” myth. The idea here is that by having sex with someone else you are passing the virus onto someone else. Some people don’t realize that the virus will stay with you, and potentially infect your new partner if you decide to have sex. This myth seems to be a variation of the “have sex with a virgin” myth that seems to be more prevalent in South Africa. Both myths are obviously dangerous because they are encouraging HIV+ people to engage in as much sexual activity as possible.

If you pray, you will never get HIV/AIDS:

This myth presupposes that if you are a good Christian, or a good Muslim, you will never get HIV/AIDS. This myth is particularly dangerous because it makes people believe that as long as they pray, they are immune to the virus.

HIV/AIDS can be found inside many condoms, so if you use protection you have a higher chance of getting the virus:

This myth is just one more roadblock in the movement to get as many people to use protection as possible. It’s hard enough to encourage condom use in many of these areas because of religious or traditional problems, so this myth is the last thing that we need. This myth also corresponds with the first myth, because some people believe that it was the Americans who put the virus in the condom.

Jacob Zuma’s many HIV/AIDS myths:

In December 2005, Jacob Zuma, the current President of South Africa and the then head of the National AIDS council, was accused of raping an HIV+ woman. According to reports from the trial, Zuma was aware that this woman was HIV+ but he still decided to have unprotected sex with her. When asked why he did this, Zuma responded by saying: 1) He wasn’t worried about contracting HIV because women cannot give the virus to men. Only men can give the virus to men. 2) He wasn’t worried about contracting the virus because he took a shower immediately after sexual intercourse. Can you imagine the impact that these words had on the South African population? Because of this man’s words and actions, millions of people (and especially men) thought it was ok to have unprotected sex with HIV+ women as long as they took a shower afterwards. Keep in mind that this message was coming from the head of the National AIDS Council! This is the type of event that sets the HIV education movement back several years.

As you can see, there are many HIV/AIDS related myths that make our work here more difficult than it should be. These myths really prove to me how important HIV education can be though, because if we can move around and go around to as many communities as possible we can potentially dispel as many of these myths as possible.

In talking with many of our coaches, it seems like they have to deal with many of these myths on a regular basis. Many of them said that they spent more time than they would like to think about telling people that they should not believe these HIV/AIDS myths. Hopefully, by reaching as many different sites as possible we’ll be able to fight these myths and show people how much more effective it can be to learn HIV facts.

You may be surprised to hear this, but there are actually many more myths related to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Many of them are more directly relevant to stigma and discrimination (for instance, if you touch someone with HIV then you will contract the virus etc). If you want to hear any more about these common myths then hit me up at emunir@grassrootsoccer.org and we’ll talk about it.

Hope everyone is doing well. Been hearing a lot from people who are reading up on my adventures, so thanks for the support and hopefully we’ll continue to stay in touch. I’ve been trying to upload pictures for the past week but my Internet connection is too slow/insecure…but I’ll keep trying!