Children ’ s Vulnerability to HIV / AIDS , Poverty and Malnutrition in Buhaya : Advancement through women ’ s empowerment

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Githinji, Valerie
Copyright Year	2009
Abstract	Children form a vulnerable segment in society in general, given their dependence on adults for their immediate needs. The impacts of HIV/AIDS result in increasing children’s vulnerability to poverty, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS and related illness. The HIV/AIDS epidemic also causes many children to be orphaned and raised by grandparents and members of their extended family who may already struggle for their own livelihood security. This paper focuses on children’s particular vulnerability to the vicious cycle of poverty, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS in Buhaya in northwestern Tanzania, a region that has been severely impacted by HIV/AIDS for nearly three decades. Buhaya has also experienced a decline in access to fertile land and decreasing agricultural productivity for the past three decades, causing and exacerbating widespread household poverty, food and nutrition insecurity and fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its cycles. In this chapter, I describe some of the very vulnerable situations children in Buhaya are living in, as witnessed during one year of field research in the village of Nsisha. I highlight the plight of children living with single mothers who are often viewed as ‘illegitimate’ and therefore not recognized by patriarchal Bahaya clans. This precarious situation results in the deprivation of children’s rights to land inheritance as well as to basic needs such as food and nutrition security, healthcare, education and a viable future in this predominately semisubsistence agricultural society. Given that children’s and women’s health, nutrition, and poverty work in synergy and interdependently affect each other, I argue that empowering women and upholding their human rights is crucial to breaking inherited cycles of poverty and its manifestations and to advancing the welfare and future of children in Buhaya. The material for this paper emanates from broader sociocultural anthropological research conducted in 2005-06 on the connections of widowhood, food insecurity and HIV/ AIDS in the village of Nsisha located approximately twelve kilometers from Bukoba Urban in northwestern Tanzania. At the beginning of this research I conducted a village survey whereby my field assistant and I interviewed the head or other available adult member of each household in the village. We gathered socioeconomic information based on the type of housing inhabitants occupied (such as mud, brick, cement and whether the roof was constructed from thatch or iron sheets), assets owned (such as livestock, number of farms, bicycle, radio), and number of people living in the house and their gender, age and relation to household head. Afterwards, we conducted over 180 structured and unstructured interviews with widows, widowers, (married) couples, single women with children, and an orphan-headed household and obtained information on personal histories, agriculture, gender, widowhood, poverty and HIV/AIDS. During the year of research I had the opportunity to observe the conditions under which children, particularly orphans and (other) children living in the poorest households, live in Nsisha. In addition, through the interview questions and openended answers, I gained an understanding of some general and specific challenges that children face and how many of them are entrapped in situations of poverty, malnutrition and illness. Background of Research and Methods Used Children’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, poverty and malnutrition in Buhaya | VALERIE GITHINJI 11 12 The first case of HIV/AIDS was diagnosed in 1983 (Rugalema, 1999; Iliffe, 2006), a time which coincides with increasing population, increasing land pressures due to a patriarchal system in which bibanja (plural of kibanja) parcels are bequeathed primarily to the eldest and youngest sons (Culwick, 1938; Cory & Hartnoll, 1971), a decline in soil fertility and the aftermath of the Tanzanian-Ugandan War (Kaijage, 1993; Lyons, 2004; Iliffe, 2006). This was a volatile time in Buhaya marked by various forms of socio-culture and economic decline, and widespread household poverty and food insecurity (Rugalema 1999, 2004). The results of the war brought many refugees into the area, which further compounded the ecological challenges as people competed for important livelihood resources (Lyons 2004). The war and the active black market, or magendo, are blamed for instigating the first epicenter of HIV/AIDS (Rugalema 1999, 2004; Lyons 2004), of which Buhaya was part. Rape during war, extra-marital sexual encounters, and high social interaction and prostitution along the border served as major venues for contracting and spreading HIV/AIDS to the hinterlands of Buhaya, creating a region that was truly and shockingly devastated by an HIV/AIDS pandemic (Kaijage 1993; Lyons 2004). For over three decades Buhaya has experienced the wrath of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Its coincidence with deteriorating ecological challenges (Tibaijuka 1997) created an upheaval in the traditional Bahaya agricultural and cultural system as they once knew it (Rugalema 1999, 2004). Fewer households are able to own and maintain cattle, which is an offshoot of a 1900’s rinderpest epidemic (Kjekshus 1996; Piters 1999 cited by Mitti and Rweyemamu 2001) compounded by decades of increasing land pressure, decreasing grazing land, and widespread poverty (Rugalema 1999). During the HIV/AIDS crises, cattle serve as disposable assets which provide capital for patients who are suffering from and who eventually die from AIDS (Rugalema 1999, 2004). Often money is eaten up by medical expenses from either traditional or biomedical treatments and funerary expenses (Tibaijuka 1997; Rugalema 1999, 2004). The decline in cattle negatively impacts the kibanja since lack of manure to enrich the poor soils leads to lower banana productivity (Baijukya 2004). The kibanja also suffers neglect as time is devoted to caring for patients and observing funerary and mourning rituals. As a result, it becomes a bush, and stubborn weeds take over, making it very difficult to preserve (Rugalema 1999), or restore. This neglect of the kibanka attracts insects known as ekiuka which ravage banana trees and farms (Rugalema1999, 2004). At the onset of HIV/AIDS, ekiuka was already devastating the kibanja, and the two ecological travesties resulted in the Bahaya using one term, ekiuka, to refer to the pathogens which destroy healthy banana plants and the pathogens which lead to AIDS and destroy the Bahaya people (Rugalema 1999, 2004; Githinji 2008). Since its inception in 1983 a generation of people, primarily parents, have been wiped out by the HIV/AIDS pandemic (Kaijage 1993), leaving a generation of vulnerable children who contract it and die, while others are left destitute, or are orphaned and forced to live with remaining relatives (Urassa et al. 1997; Foster and Williamson 2000; Barnett and Whiteside 2002; de Wagt and M. Connolly 2005; Tumushabe 2005). Some orphans, such as a case mentioned later in this chapter, become the heads of households after the death of both parents. One of the greatest impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is an increase in widowhood, female-headed households and insecure relationships, since AIDS is both a cause and consequence of distrust, separation, divorce and death. Since men tend to die earlier than women, there are more paternal orphans than maternal orphans (Gillespie et al. 2005). In most cases paternal orphans most often reside with their mother, grandmother or female relative (Rugalema 1999; Foster and Williamson 2000; Barnett and Whiteside 2002; de Wagt and M. Connolly 2005). In situations where a wife dies before the husband, he usually remarries and his children are not always counted as orphans (Gillespie et al. 2005). A child who loses both parents is considered a double orphan and similar to cases of paternal orphans, these children often go to live with a female relative (Urassa et al. 1997; de Wagt and M. Connolly 2005; Gillespie et al. 2005; Iliffe 2006; Beegle et al. 2007). HIV/AIDS has also resulted in a generation of people born into the HIV/AIDS era who see AIDS like malaria, something that is common, chronic, ubiquitous and inevitable—a normal part of everyday life (Rugalema 1999, 2004). In fact, several informants in their twenties and thirties stated that HIV/AIDS is ‘the disease of the time’. This normalization leads people to take risks and become numb to the dire consequences that HIV/AIDS has on their life, and that of their dependents, family, and larger community. This embodied normalization of HIV/AIDS is also a coping mechanism since life inevitably has to go on (even) during times of crises (Rugalema, 1999, 2004). However, I argue, becoming numb to or seeing HIV/ AIDS as a normal part of everyday life ultimately results in the intensification and perpetuation of widespread poor health, poverty and food insecurity in Nsisha (de Wagt et al. 2005; Hecht et al. 2006). Since most households are already indirectly or directly affected by HIV/AIDS and are (highly) vulnerable to poverty and its manifestations, forgetting about the dire consequences of HIV/AIDS because it seems so normal and part and parcel of everyday life drives people to take risks which can push a household into devastation. Several informants for instance stated that the celebrations that occur in the village at nighttime serve as one of the most important venues for HIV/AIDS transmission because people gather to socialize, imbibe and engage in unprotected sex, hence forgetting the risks involved. Unlike in the past when celebrations, according to Bahaya customs, could not occur at the same time death and funerary rituals were taking place in the village, informants state that ‘due to HIV/AIDS and the constant deaths it causes, people now engage in merrymaking at the same time someone is being buried because of HIV/AIDS.’ When parents and guardians become sickly and die of HIV/AIDS, children often bear the brunt of the vicious HIV/AIDS: Onset
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