(aka: “Wait…you’re doing what where?”
I have -- as careful readers may have noticed -- recently moved to Swaziland after a two year sojourn in the US which – as even more careful readers may have noticed – itself followed a two year and change sojourn in South Africa. Why, you may ask (my mother has repeatedly asked herself, I imagine), have I gone back to the world of bucket baths and marriage proposals for six months and abandoned the world of Lush cosmetics and convenient roof-top gyms?
First of all, I have a shower this time. This is a key fact, and maybe one of the most important things I learned about myself in Peace Corps: I really, really like showers. I may be back in southern Africa, but I’m staying in a very nice guest house and shortly moving to a REALLY nice apartment in the capital city (Mbabane). Bucket baths and chamber pots will happen only in moments of extreme extremity. I will still be taking “local transport” (kombis and busses), because kombis make you tough. Bucket baths may make you tough too, but I repeat: F that noise, I like showers.
That out of the way, let’s get back to the point. What the hell am I doing here?
For the second half of my master’s program I need to do a practicum. This means I need to go hang out ‘in the field’ for at least 3 months in order to prove that I actually do like the idea of international health and community based what-not, and that I have possibly even learned something about international health and community based what-not in the preceding 9 months of coursework. At the end of this process I hand over a 30 – 50 page essay about how educated I have become, and JHSPH cashes my check and coughs up my MHS degree.
Most people are very smart and find a suitable international organization that places them in a suitable international internship, at which they possibly have a defined job and tasks to accomplish, and frequently somebody besides them makes at least one or two of the arrangements. (I'm not saying this is easy, I'm just saying it is the usual route). I am not this smart. I am doing an independent research project here in Swaziland that I spent about 8 months doing a lot of fast talking and application writing to get some funding for. Two organizations, the Center for Global Health at Johns Hopkins, and the Health Economics and AIDS Research Department (HEARD) at the University of KwaZulu Natal, decided to bet that I’m maybe not a total idiot and are curious to see what I come up with out here. Which is as follows:
I am here to study traditional stories and songs. The idea is that stories and songs (“oral traditions / literature”) are one of the primary transmitters of cultural values in a society. Stories are one of the first things that you hear as a child, and they are a large part of how a culture explains and transmits itself. Stories, fables, myths, fairy tales, and all the rest, speak to people on a different level (I think) and as such are a really good way to access what is important and valued in a society. The idea is two-fold:
1) See what values and ideals are being transmitted in traditional Swazi stories in order to get an idea what cultural values and ideals may be affecting the spread of HIV in this country. What is the perspective on gender roles? On polygamy, relationships, the necessity of having many children, what it means to be sick and who is responsible for preventing illness/making you better? I think that stories and songs are a really interesting way to access these ideas.
2) What is the role and structure of these stories in current Swazi society? Can they – or something similar – be adapted to a curriculum of some sort that would teach prevention or harm reduction or care or whatever else? Do they still have enough weight to be useful (I think so) and are they a medium that people will recognize and respond to better than billboards and radio ads? (I hope so).
So that’s the plan. We’ll see how it works out.
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