Traditional Sex Education To Mitigate HIV And AIDS – Chitungu

The Zilengo and Mbusa exhibition reveals a hidden traditional sex education technique aimed at mitigating HIV and AIDS taught to the youths during initiation ceremonies.
According to the exhibition originally from Mbala’s Moto-Moto Museum which has travelled to Lusaka, Choma and is presently exhibited at the
Livingstone Museum, sex education targeting issues of promiscuity is imbedded in artifacts such as birds, insects and cooking utensils to send a message on the dangers of HIV and AIDS.
According to museum director Victoria Chitungu, who on Tuesday took chiefs and traditional affairs minister Prof Nkandu Luo, her deputy Belinda Kawandami, International Council of Museums (ICOM) president Hans-Martin Hinz and Committee for Education and Cultural Action (CECA) president Prof Emma Nardi through the Zilengo and Mbusa collection, sex education has been taught at traditional
levels for some time.
“This exhibition is in the mitigation of HIV and AIDS because as our Professor Luo has said that we museums have a lot of information about our own people, about education and especially in HIV and AIDS. The problem of HIV and AIDS when it came, we have had no information that is telling us that we have no sex education. That is why it is so rampant, but we looked at the Mbusa collection, we found that we actually have sex education and we want our people to connect to our traditional sex education to mitigate HIV and AIDS,” Chitungu said.
She said using the Mbusa, tradition has turned to a species of white birds known as inkowa which symbolises purity and focuses on abstinence.
“It talks of abstinence, not having pre-marital sex.”
The exhibition starts with Ingombe’naimita, which is pregnant clay feminine figurine which warns the initiate against the dangers of
early pregnancy.
“It highlights that teenage pregnancy brings with it with all sorts of problems and one of it is that one becomes economically disabled because one gets out of school and gets to have a child while one is a child. That is why it has one hand extended forward gesturing a warning signal,” Chitungu said.
She then turned to the iciyongoli (millipede) which urges the initiates to listen to wise teachings.
“In the problem of HIV and AIDS there is so many information coming out, so it implies that if one is not getting the information and you are not applying it, one can be like this millipede that failed to get wise teaching from the mother to bury itself in soil before the rains completely finished,” Chitungu said.
There is also the umukowa, a basket artifact, talking about family values with an emphasis of taking care of one another.
“Inside the basket, the basket gives comfort. It protects and takes care of everyone. If you are not taken care of, if you are not inside the basket then you are a destitute, so it encourages family units especially now when we have issues of HIV and AIDS. If you are taken to the hospital and after getting treatment you are sent back home, if there is no family, where do you end up?”
Chitungu then turned to the Eastern Province artifact known as chilengo which also talks about family. The artifact is in form of a stick with a strand coiled around it.
“As an individual, one is like a creeper and needs something to lean
on, which is a family. Without a family, one can’t survive. And this one is the icipelebasha (butterfly). It talks about the beauty of the butterfly. The butterfly is always spreading its wings and looks beautiful, but it is a warning against prostitution, because prostitution is about display. If one engages into prostitution, it means that it is very easy to get infected with HIV or spread it,” she said.
When she got to an artifact known as tente, Prof Luo quipped in and said there was a song with relics of ‘Tente yabuta.’
“It is a mushroom and it is white and that a man should always see their wives as this mushroom,” Prof Luo said.
Chitungu added that tente is a tasty mushroom and that there was also another song which stated that ‘Tente nainukwile nemwina.’
“I pick you as my partner, you are nobody else’s, so it promotes sticking to one sexual partner,” Chitungu said.
On display was also mushroom species known locally known as nsamfwe which grows in a cluster but there are others that would grow away from a cluster which teaches about respect of all relatives so as to avoid conflicts.
Chitungu then turned to mpelo, a grinding stone and bende, a moulter and pesto which also encourages one sexual partner.
Then there is amafwesa, which talks of balancing of a good sexual relationship in a marriage and there is also this kolwe (monkey), which denotes one who sneaks out with other people’s wives.
And speaking earlier when opening the International Museums Day, Prof Luo advised people to visit museums.
“There is a discourse about dress that people walking with mini dress are not respectful… but in this country there was a time when people walked in the nude, there was no cloth…and because of the changing culture before cloth was introduced people thought of using the barks of tree to make cloth. Where I come from in Northern Province we call it the chilundu…and they only covered the parts that mattered because it was very expensive to dress everybody in chilundu,” Prof Luo said.
Prof Luo said culture was dynamic and changes with time.
She said a country without heritage and culture is a lost one.

Posted by Kunda on May 26, 2014. Filed under HEALTH. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.