Maggie Keenan Wheeler, an American freelance writer who recently spent several years in Uganda, where she prepared two Best Practice Case Studies for UNAIDS, including one on the project cited in this article
At this Ugandan school associated with the village mosque, pupils learn to fear God… and Aids.
‘She needs to know how to say no and mean no’
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HIV/Aids in Uganda Out of a population of 20.7 million, 930,000
live with HIV/Aids. Among adults in the 15-49 age group, 9.51% are HIV-infected,
along with 67,000 children under the age of 15. The epidemic has so far claimed 1.8
million lives. Source: UNAIDS, 1998. |
In informal
schools tied to mosques, Muslim religious leaders have taken on a pivotal role in
teaching youth the basics of prevention
Mohammed
Mubiru admits that Aids is a topic he has never discussed with his parents. “They
would think I was being dis-respectful,” he says. So where did Mubiru, a teenager,
learn about the disease?
In an innovative project launched by the Islamic Medical Association of Uganda (IMAU),
youth in Mpigi (50 km southwest of Kampala) and Kamuli Districts (140 km northeast
of the capital) are learning about Aids at Madarasa schools associated with the mosques
in their villages. These schools are open on weekends to teach Muslim children the
Arabic language and principles of Islamic culture and behaviour. Muslims account
for about 16 per cent of Uganda’s 20 million people. In 1989, the country’s highest
Muslim authority declared a jihad (holy war) on Aids, paving the way for the Madarasa
Aids Education and Prevention project.
In a 36-lesson curriculum developed by the Ugandan Ministry of Health and the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), youth in the Madarasa schools learn about HIV/Aids
transmission, prevention and control during 40-minute sessions. The curriculum was
recently enriched with a life skills component to equip youth with some of the tools
they need for building self-esteem and coping with various challenges of growing
up. Topics include resisting peer pressure, communication skills and being assertive:
“If a girl is asked by a man to have sex, she needs to know how to say no and mean
no,” insists Neema Nakyanjo, IMAU’s project officer. He helps to train county sheikhs,
imams and their assistants to use the curriculum. These trainees, in-turn, supervise
the training of volunteer Madarasa teachers at mosques in their area. Since its launch
in 1995, the programme has reached more than 36,000 children in 350 schools.
“It is challenging to introduce the topic of Aids, but children need to know,” says
Imam Hassan Magola from Bukulube Mosque. The project underlines that certain traditional
Muslim practices
can increase the risk of exposure to the HIV
virus, namely male circumcision with unsterile instruments and ablution of the dead
without protective gloves. Introducing the topic of condoms however proved to be
the single greatest hurdle. In the first year, the issue was removed from the curriculum
after some religious leaders argued that recommending use of condoms would promote
sex outside marriage. Over a year, IMAU held a dialogue with Islamic leaders to work
through their concerns, stressing that the condom was only being promoted as protection
after the failure of the first two lines of defence: abstaining from sex and having
sex only within marriage. As IMAU argued, girls do become pregnant before marriage
and there are many cases of sexually transmitted disease among the unmarried. Islamic
leaders eventually agreed that education on the responsible use of condoms was acceptable
and the topic was reinserted in the curriculum in the second year.
Now, the project’s main struggle is with funding. UNICEF has contributed $35,000
to the project since its launch while parents are encouraged to give the Madarasa
teacher 100 Ugandan shillings per session (less than 10 cents) and have repeatedly
expressed their support for the project. Growing numbers of non-Muslim parents are
seeking to enrol their children in the Madarasa Aids classes. What’s clear is that
students feel able to talk more openly about the subject. “When I see someone with
Aids, I know what they are going through and I sympathize,” says one student. “I
have learned that Aids is a reality and I live in fear of it.”
