Circumcision Reduces Risk of Contracting HIV/AIDs

Some have referred to it as the surgical vaccine that reduces the risk of men contracting HIV/AIDs by at least sixty percent. Some say that the reduction in risk, or protective effect is as high as 76 percent, which is equal to the protection that the flu shot gives against the flue. What is this wonder surgery? Circumcision.

The controlled, clinical trails were held in three African countries: Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. All three countries have high levels of HIV/AIDS. More than 11,000 HIV negative, uncircumcised, young men took part in the trials. In order to be accepted into the study, the young men had to be willing to be circumcised. A randomly selected portion of the men were immediately circumcised by a doctor, while the others did not undergo the surgery. The trials in all three countries were halted early because the results were so evident that it would be unethical to continue to forbid the control group from being circumcised. The South African Study lasted 18 months and 1,446 who young men who remained uncircumcised 49 contracted HIV. While only 20 of the 1,431 who were circumcised became infected.

Scientists believe that the region between the foreskin and the shaft of the penis provides a possible hiding place for HIV to hide after intercourse.

In the face of such compelling trials, the World Health Organization and the United Nations HIV/AIDS agency both recommend circumcision as a component of any comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention program.

Even though circumcision was being practiced thousand of years ago, and these recent trials point its ability to reduce the risk of contracting HIV, the very brief and cheap surgery is far from being the norm all over Africa. Neither Christianity nor many forms of African Traditional Religion forbid circumcision, and it is among the rites of Islam. Traditional beliefs in many ethnic groups in east and southern Africa require circumcision of adolescent young men. Yet, other ethnic groups in that part of the continent view circumcision as a part of their identity. In West Africa, even though many ethnic groups do not require circumcision, community health education has caused a growing number of parents to take their infant sons to clinics to receive the surgery.

Most development and aid agencies currently attempt to persuade families to have their sons circumcised, yet they will have to study further to come up with compelling, culturally appropriate instruction to persuade more to go under the scalpel.

Of course, circumcised men are in no way immune to contracting HIV/AIDS.  It is still best to only have sex within marraige and for both the man and women to be tested for HIV prior to marriage.

For a more information read the following articles:

Circumcision — A Surgical Strategy for HIV Prevention in Africa - The New England Journal of Medicine, 2008

Male circumcision for HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa: who, what, when? -Global Health Sciences Literature Digest, 2009
Research: Male Circumcision and HIV Prevention - USAID On-Line

Over the next few weeks I want to share with you an outstanding menu of African speakers.  They a new breed that rejects the negative publicity about Africa and offers inspiration and clear proposals for the future.

My friend Ed Dodds told me about the presentations on T.E.D.  TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.

The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Oxford, bring together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).  There are over 700 talks available online.  Speakers are from all over the world.  Africa is well represented.

TED says they “believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.”

The first talk I want to share with you is, “Cheetahs vs. Hippos” by Ghanaian George Ayittey.  Ayittey was  born in Ghana in 1945.  He is an economist, author and president of the Free Africa Foundation in Washington DC.  He is a professor at American University^, and an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

He says “Hippos” (lazy, slow, ornery, greedy) have ruined postcolonial Africa.  Why, then, does he remain optimistic? Because of the young, agile “Cheetah Generation,” a “new breed of Africans” taking their futures into their own hands.

Listen to this outstanding talk.  Press the play button below.

To read a written transcript of the talk, click here.

Ayittey challenges all to be cheetahs:

• not tolerate corruption
• not wait on government to give them something.
• The hippos benefit from the rotten status quo.  They get fat on it.
• Africa’s begging bowl leaks into the mouths of the hippos.
• African governments failed their people.
• It is time for a no-nonsense generation to take over.

What do you think?  Is Ayittey speaking truth and making appropriate challenges?  Please your comments below.

In my next post, I will highlight a talk by Nigerian writer,Chimamanda Adichie. She speaks on “The Danger of a Single Story.”

A True Victory Story…..

By Richard Chowning

When Paulo Arap Lang’at, a tall, muscular African, stands before an audience and proclaims, “Jesus is the Savior of my soul and he can save you too,” you would assume he had preached the gospel most of his life. Actually, for many years Paulo terrorized neighbors and embarrassed relatives. The Savior made the difference - all the difference in the world.

Thirty-two year-old Paulo has converted many of his Kipsigis tribesmen to Christ. Villagers crave his mixture of joy and conviction.

Paulo knows that his fellow Kipsigis search for answers to a life in fear of ancestors and the inability to cast the fear out. Paulo preaches the blood-stained Christ on a white horse and his own changed life.

The Kipsigis easily understand Paulo’s lessons. They are a fine weave of scripture, traditional culture and personal experience. He talks of the culture’s weaknesses and his own sinfulness. Then he reads scriptures that speak of fear turned to courage and weakness turned to strength.

The change is real to Paulo.

His History

He has always been in the public eye. His father died when Paulo was in his early twenties. His uncles and mother found him uncontrollable. He dropped out of school early and took to the back paths of the village. He hid in bushes and waited for school children. When they walked home in small groups Paulo would jump out of bushes and threaten them. “If you want to pass, give me money or some clothes.” Many of the children would take their shirts off and hand them to him.

He had been brought before the village elders on several occasions. Frequent fines were paid by his parents. When police were sent to catch him, he escaped.

Paulo’s Conversion

It was the gospel that finally caught and convicted Paulo. When the church of Christ evangelists first walked into his village Paulo heard that one of his relatives was converted. He determined to go to the next meeting and pour his ridicule on the “message of weakness, only fit women and children.” But as Paulo listened he soon found himself in the company of the Apostle Paul, and multitudes throughout the centuries, who were turned from scorn to salvation. Once he heard the gospel, his sinful life haunted him. He was only relieved when he told the preacher he wanted to have his sins washed away in baptism.

Villagers were fearful when he began to preached with power of voice and spirit. They expected him to violently persuade them to follow him into the Kingdom of God. As the months passed the villagers were convinced Paulo’s change was true. “If these words can change Paulo, they must be powerful.” Villagers listened and were converted.

Paulo, like all Kipsigis preachers, supports himself. He attempted many ways to gain income for his family. The family farm does well, but he wants his family to have better opportunities then his present finances permit them to enjoy. He has just opened a small restaurant. He spends long hours cooking and waiting on his customers. But he always finds time to preach.

Paulo’s influence for the Savior has gone beyond his own village. He preached often in the beginning of the Arokiyet congregation. His persuasiveness helped that congregation grow faster than any in the tribe. He has planted congregations in the villages of two of his relatives.

Paulo’s Most Rewarding Confrontation

One of Paulo’s most rewarding confrontations with the unsaved came two years ago. He and three other evangelists visited the Tugen tribal area eighty miles from home. One of the men they talked to about the Savior was a young government chief. The gospel penetrated his heart. He was won to the Lord. The baptism was set for later in the day.

Paulo and the other evangelists ate dinner in the chief’s home. While they ate the chief asked them questions about their village and past lives. Paulo recounted his changed life from steeling from children to speaking for the Lord. The chief was taken back. He smiled and said, “I used to work for the Central Intelligence Division near your village. I was sent to Kiptewit several times to look for this bully of children. Now you found me and changed my life.”

Several nominations and awards for his first published short story collection had to have pleased Uwem Akpan, but his fortunes literally came gushing in when Say You’re One of Them (Oprah’s Book Club) was selected by Oprah Winfrey for her book club earlier this year (2009).

Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda, in southern Nigeria.  He is the son school teachers who grew up, did most of his village mates, speaking English and his mother tongue, Annang.  That is where his conformity stopped.  He was ordained a Jesuit Priest after completing studies at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, studied Humanities at Campion House, a scholarly Jesuit community attached to Creighton University, and pursued philosophy at Gonzaga University in Washington State for two years.

In 2001, Akpan returned to the United States to cap off his education with
a MFA degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan.  He is presently teacher at a seminary in Zimbabwe.

Say You’re One of Them (Oprah’s Book Club) is a collection of short stories are windows into contemporary Africa today for children in some of the most trying situations: living on the street, child trafficking, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.  The characters are children, but the stories are written for adults, not that Father Akpan uses any vulgar language or flaunts sex, but he brings you into their very shocking lives.  The title of the collection is not a title from one of the short stories, but if you Say You’re One of Them as you read, you will experience life in a very different way than you ever imagined.  Even though I have seen a lot in Africa in my 25 years there, Akpan, thourgh mostly first person narratives (one unique second person piece) gave me a taste of danger and vulnerability that I had never known at such a deep level.

This should be a ‘must read’ for every politician, professor, mover and shaker, even every compassionate human being.  “To see, to feel, to hear, to smell and to touch” the world of these children may compel us to do something so that other children will not find themselves in similar circumstances.


Akpan was taken by the plight of street children in Nairobi when he was at seminary there.  “An Ex-Mass Feast” is the first story in the collection and his first work to find print when it was published in the New Yorker in 2005.  “An Ex-Mass Feast” has been posted, in its entirety, on Akpan’s official website.  Give it a read.  I am confident you will want to buy the collection. 

“Say You’re One of Them is a bold attempt to enlighten readers about children in Africa, fueled by a passionate desire to create a safer place for children all over the world,” says the Most Reverend Camillus Etokudoh, in the Afterword.

The Oprah’s Book Club edition of Say You’re One of Them comes complete with a short Reading Group Guide and interview with Akpan.

This is just the beginning of the career of who I think will be one of Africa’s great creative writers, in fact Akpan might have already achieved literary greatness.

Of course this is not the beginning of stories of Africa. There have been multitudes of articles, stories and books written about Africa. I do welcome you to the beginning of Stories of Africa website and blog which is a home for we who reading and writing about Africa.

Reporters share the daily events from the continent: the challenges, disasters, victories and lessons. We will carry a daily RSS news feed from BBC’s Africa service, but our emphasis will be on the reporters themselves. We will highlight the stories behind the stories, the careers of those who write the new.  Jeff Koinange, Hilary Ng’weno, and Amin Mohamed are the first of many we will feature.  We encourage you to give your own observations and ratings of these reporters in the comment boxes. Suggest other reporters for us to feature.

The scholars of Africa help us remember the past and plan for the future. On the Stories of Africa we will be looking into the life work of some of these scholars and detailing much of their writing. The initial featured scholars (Kwame Appiah, Ali Mazrui, and John Mbiti) are only a toenail of an elephant compared to the entire wealth of scholars who have written of Africa, her people and land. We will be adding new scholars periodically, further we solicit you to give us the names of your favorite scholars, who might even be yourself.

Through fiction and poetry, the story tellers of Africa carry us into the heart and soul of what it is to be African or to live among Africans. The light of their insights has flashed a light on what others have ignorantly referred to as the Dark Continent. Some readers may be familiar with the story tellers we present this month (Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Njabulo Ndebele, Nadine Gordimer, Leopold Senghor, and Mazisi Kunene), but most of Africa’s fiction writers are unknown to the rest of the world. Our task is to give their work exposure. No doubt, you have a favorite fiction writer or poet.  Tell us about him or her. If you are one who is blessed with a muse from Africa and wish to share your fiction here, we may feature you and your work.

I lived in Africa for more than twenty-five years. Sixteen of them were in Kenya among the Kipsigis people. Nine were among the Aja people of Benin. I researched and traveled in more than a dozen countries. I am an avid reader of reports, articles, and stories from Africa and have written over a hundred of myself.

Lets begin to share the stories of Africa.

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