By Riz Ibrahim

Aids in Africa: the Impact of the Pandemic on the Concept of Career Development – Some Impressions

It was a long train ride from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Lusaka in Zambia. The first stretch of the journey on the Tazara (Tanzanian-Zambian Railway) line was relatively fast and comfortable – we travelled through the unfolding East African savannah and hugged the Great Rift Valley.

We were oblivious to the development challenges of this country as natural beauty abounded. It was a different story after we left the Tanzanian border stop of Mbeya. Crossing into Zambia the train crawled along this stretch of track. It was more crowded now and the corridors of the train carriage bustled with activity. We were a bit numbed by our 40 plus hours of travel but we couldn’t help to think that Africa had just transformed itself as we crossed the border. Through the bars of the carriage window, children as young as five vied for empty plastic mineral water bottles. “You give bottle. I get Kwacha (the local currency). I eat.”

Two nights on the train gave much time to observe and reflect. My wife and I were going to a small village in northern Zambia to visit a rural education project sponsored by the UK-based NGO CamFed. I was on a planned leave of absence from my work as Executive Director of Contact Point, and was accompanying my wife as she provided photo-narrative support for this important local development project. As the train got closer to its destination, we both realized that what changed as we crossed the border was that the evidence of poverty was much more in-your-face: more noticeable impoverished people, more noticeable destitute children. We talked to our cabin mates, Zambians from two different parts of the country, about their economic and social realities. What did they do? What was their education? What about family and tribe? We were trying to understand, albeit at a very cursory level, social and economic mobility, access to health and education, and the role of tribe and religion in modern Zambian life. A few days later in Lusaka, I began to process what I have seen and heard. After chatting with our Zambian driver, Webster, about HIV/AIDS in his country, I wondered about the impact of the pandemic on the concept of career development here.

 

Context

Webster, in his mid twenties, was in good health. He had a high school education and a steady job working within the enterprise of our host family. His wife and two children lived with him in Lusaka, and his parents were alive and well. Most of all he was thankful for all of this. When asked what career aspirations he had for his two children, he looked over at us (we were sitting
in the front seat of his pick-up truck), and said: “the reality is that if you were both Zambian, one of us would not be here having this conversation. It is hard to plan a life when this reality is all around you.” It was a profound and deeply impactful statement. We were in a country with an HIV/AIDS rate of 20% – 30%.

It took a few more days for the full force of his statement to sink in. It had significant implications for education, health, the economy and the labour market in the country. I tried to balance the experiences of the train ride with what I saw in a modern Lusaka – car dealerships, strip malls, cyber-cafes, pubs and fast food joints. The concept of a career was a luxury here – in the realm of the few, while basic sustainability was the over arching concept for the many. The development challenges for African countries such as Zambia were profoundly far-reaching because of HIV/AIDS. Consider the following:¹

• At the end of 2001, 28.1 million adults and children were living with HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa – 55% of HIV-positive adults were women
• More than 13.7 million African children had lost one or both parents to AIDS by the end of 2001 and the number is expected to rise to 40 million over the next decade.
• According to UNDP’s Human Development Report 2004, Zambia’s life expectancy at birth in 2002 was 32.7 years. Before AIDS, it was 68.6 years.
• In the first ten months of 1998, Zambia lost 1,300 teachers to AIDS — the equivalent of around two thirds of all new teachers trained annually.

These figures are almost unimaginable. While HIV/AIDS has disproportionately affected economic sectors that have large numbers of mobile or migratory workers such as agriculture, transportation and mining, it has also affected educators at all levels and those in the private and public sectors.

A 2002 UN report citing a study by the International Labour Organization states that “it will become increasingly challenging to replace skilled workers across all occupational sectors in the continent because of the difficulty in training new workers, the loss of opportunities for on-the-job training due to the death of more experienced workers, and the increase in the number of children who must go to work, thus missing opportunities for skills training…it is hard to see how the stock of human capital can be maintained, given the erosion of capacity in the education sector presently underway. Also, the impact of AIDS on development and labour in the future will continue to be severe, because the education and training systems are failing to make provisions to replace the current and likely loss of skills in the workforce.²

 

A Sense of Hope

The project we visited a few days later, our main reason for coming to Zambia, was located just outside the town of Mpika, in the north of the country. The aim of the project was to augment existing CAMFed support in the area by building a girls’ hostel – they currently provided financial support for a rural school including supplies, curriculum development including AIDS awareness education, and administrative expenses. We visited a number of villages nearby with our local contacts (from the district education committee), liaising with villagers and trying to drum up interest in a meeting to discuss the hostel. The local communities had identified that fewer and fewer girls were attending the only school in the area. Financial reasons, distance and danger prohibited many girls from gaining an education. For some girls, the school was several kilometres from home – and they did not have adequate footwear. In some instances, girls would have to walk up to ten kilometres or more to get to school, and the potential for sexual assault (and possible infection) along the way was a real threat and deterrent. For other girls, their familial obligations to tend to household chores led to their increased absenteeism. The proposed hostel, built in close proximity to the school ground, would house these girls so that they were clothed, fed, and safely sheltered while they received their education.

The day of the meeting came, and the turnout was fantastic. A classroom at the school was designated for the meeting and it was filled to capacity with villagers from near and far who were curious and eager to talk about the need for a girls’ hostel. A dozen school girls entered the classroom and sang a song, “Thank you Mother CAMFed”, in praise of the support that had allowed them an education (I was later to learn that the song held a special meaning for some of those who were orphans and saw the development organization akin to a mother). The model proposed for the hostel project required some form of contribution from the girls’ families. The community of farmers and other villagers, in turn, offered what little money they could spare. One villager who had no money offered to make bricks while another two offered to build a part of the hostel with these bricks. A third offered a share of his crops to feed these workers. Many of these villagers had seen the impact of AIDS first hand – their families decimated and elders caring for AIDS orphans. One farmer had walked 25 km to meet with us when he had heard of the hostel. In his mind, this was emancipation for his daughter – she could be educated and have the chance of a better life than his, a well paying job, maybe in Lusaka or elsewhere.

With the possibility of an education, girls were talking about being nurses, teachers, or for one girl, working for the Tazara Railway as an engineer. In a country and a continent ravaged by HIV/AIDS there was hope that such localized initiatives were starting to make a difference. While the villagers never talked about AIDS, they knew something had to be done now so that the younger generation had a chance. They knew that women and girls were the face of AIDS in Africa – three-quarters of all Africans between the ages of 15 and 24 who are HIV-positive are women.³

As we left Zambia, I wondered if in ten years, the girl who aspired to be a railway engineer would indeed realize her goals. Would she beat the odds? Would she be alive in ten years?

My short time in Zambia left a profound impression on me. It increased my awareness of the real impact of the pandemic on human lives. Upon my return, I felt compelled to write about these experiences, to encourage others to educate themselves and be informed, and to challenge friends and colleagues to support initiatives that provide AIDS education and prevention in countries such as Zambia.

 

In contrast to other diseases, AIDS mostly devastates the productive age group — people between 15 and 50 years.
Source: www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/ aids/aids6-e.htm Some of the traditional mechanisms to ensure widows’ access to land contribute to the spread of AIDS — for example, levirate, the custom that obliges a man to marry his brother’s widow. Unfortunately, initiatives to stop these practices may leave widows without access to land and food.
Source: www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/aids/aids6-e.htm

¹www.ilo.ru/aids/docs/wp/wp1_labourmarket.pdf, http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_ZMB.html, www.avert.org/aidsorphans.htm, www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/aids/aids6-e.htm

²www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2002/issue3/071602_impact_of_hiv.html

³www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol18no3/183women_aids.htm

 

 

About the Author:

Riz Ibrahim was the founding Executive Director of Contact Point (1997 – 2003). In 2003 – 2004, he took a leave of absence, visiting development projects and rural communities in Southern Africa and South India. Riz is currently the Acting General Manager of CERIC – The Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling. He can be reached at: riz@ceric.ca.