Christian greetings from Swaziland!  I hope you and all the brethren in Iowa are well.

 

It was good to read your article in the IOWA Connection titled " Funds on Track for  Swazi School"  Many  thanks for the commitment you and your colleagues have always had in seeing the orphaned children being catered for in an improved facility.  We appreciate the effort you are making.

  

The area where the "school " is located is drought-stricken and abjectly impoverished.  As you are aware, the school is run in a temporary shelter used as a church.  The St. Augustine Church provides the orphans with lunch.  For some of the children this is the only meal they have a day.  Some of the children who go to this school are very brilliant. In some cases, the teachers and the priest there are able to negotiate for these children to be admitted in the mainstream school system.  The  women who teach these children work as volunteers with no pay at all, but they are doing a good job.

 

Looking forward to seeing you.

 

Yours in Christ,

RT. REVD. MESHACK MABUZA

BISHOP OF SWAZILAND

Reuters News Service

Life has not been kind to Mamba. Her parents died of AIDS before passing on crucial farming skills, leaving her to care for three younger siblings in a country ravaged by five years of drought.

"I want to grow spinach and beetroot to feed my brother and sisters but I don't know how," she told Reuters not far from her simple hut in Swaziland's parched lowlands.

This year she might just harvest the vegetables she craves.

Along with 24 other children from her community, Mamba is attending a United Nations farm school which teaches those orphaned by AIDS the basic skills of survival -- skills their parents were unable to pass on.

"As parents die early they are leaving a knowledge gap," said Khumbi Chinonge, who heads the farm school project. "How will these children continue if they can't grow food and take care of themselves?"

Swaziland has the world's highest rate of HIV/AIDS, which is killing key workers and whittling away the tiny country's capacity to deal with a drought that has left some 10 to 12 million people in southern Africa dependent on food aid.

Around a quarter of Swaziland's 1 million people rely on the United Nations' World Food Programme and many families in Sithobela eat just one basic meal of corn or rice a day.

LAND PESTS, LIFE PESTS
The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched the junior farmer field and life schools in Mozambique in 2003 and has since opened schools in Kenya, Namibia and Zambia, targeting some 1,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 18.

FAO has now launched the first phase of the project in Swaziland, starting with five sites but with plans to eventually reach 30,000 orphans at 1,250 schools.  

The chief and elders of the Sihlangwini community in Sithobela have given Mamba and her fellow pupils a field to use for their studies and picked the community's best farmer to teach them how to coax food from the rain-starved soil.

Phineas Magagula was the only farmer in the area to produce a decent maize crop this year after he created a makeshift irrigation system with 4 km (2.5 miles) of rubber tubing.

"I am famous for my farming skills so I was chosen to teach the children," he said with a grin.

The programme combines farming skills with lessons on personal hygiene, money management and, crucially, about the dangers of HIV in a country where some 40 percent of adults are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

"When we teach about getting rid of pests that destroy crops we also teach about pests -- like HIV -- that can destroy your life," said Chinonge.

SIMPLE TIPS
So far the children at Sihlangwini have cleared the land and built fences to keep the bony livestock that roam the area away from their crops. They start planting over the next few weeks.

Magagula said a few simple tips on farming could make the difference between a failed and successful crop, and said he would teach the children how to make the best of the land in an area where almost every stream and river has run dry.

"At the moment people try and grow maize but it is hard to grow -- I will teach them to grow sorghum, which is easier, and then vegetables, for better nutrition."

Mamba, whose skinny arms poke from a torn and grubby T-shirt, says the highlight of her twice-weekly sessions at the farm school is lunch, which is provided free by the WFP.

One of the main aims of the farm school project is to wean children like Mamba -- who is entirely dependent on WFP provisions to feed herself, two sisters and one brother -- off handouts and help them become self-sufficient.

"It's an old saying but teaching a man to fish is better than giving him a fish," he said.

Swaziland's King Mswati III -- sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch -- appealed in his state of the kingdom speech this month for donors to give more to help tackle HIV, which analysts fear could threaten the tiny nation's existence.

Aid workers are loath to criticize the young monarch in public but many say privately that perhaps the king would contribute more to the fight against HIV if he did not insist on wedding a new young bride every year. He now has 13 wives.

Magagula, 42, says that after years of working the land, teaching teenagers about sex came as a shock.

But despite receiving no salary for the twice-weekly classes on farming and health issues, he says passing on this kind of information is vital to save his community.

"We want to help them over the bridge from adolescence to adulthood," he said.

By Rebecca Harrison
MBABANE (Reuters) - It's not every day that hordes of men fight to forego their foreskins -- especially not in a country where circumcision was banned by a 19th century king.

But in the tiny African kingdom of Swaziland, circumcision is making a comeback after research showed the age-old rite may help stop the spread of HIV. Volunteers eager for the snip almost rioted at an overbooked clinic in the capital last month.

"There was a stampede," said Dr. Mark Mills, administrator at the Mbabane Clinic. "There is not a family in Swaziland unaffected by HIV and people are desperate ... In some countries you have food riots, we nearly had a circumcision riot."

Swaziland has the world's highest rate of HIV, with around 40 percent of the adult population believed to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS. Analysts say the pandemic could threaten the existence of this nation of 1 million people.

The reasons are complex: many Swazis work in mines in AIDS-ravaged neighbouring South Africa and polygamy is common. But new studies show circumcision could also play a part.

Circumcision, practised by Jews and Muslims, is common in many African countries either as part of rite-of-passage ceremonies, or in Muslim communities mostly in West Africa.

Swaziland's King Mswati II banned it in the late 1800s because young men recovering from the surgery were distracted from waging war. The country, wedged between South Africa and Mozambique, has one of the world's lowest circumcision rates.

Researchers have noted links between high rates of HIV and low rates of male circumcision since the 1980s, but last year the first controlled study in South Africa found circumcised men were around 60 percent less likely to contract HIV.

Circumcision's benefits may stem from the fact that the foreskin has cells that the virus seems able to easily infect.

The study by French and South African researchers was published in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal -- and its findings filtered down to Swazis through newspapers, talk shows and politicians.

Mbabane Clinic, a private hospital, is performing some 10 circumcisions a week compared to less than one a month prior to the study. The Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) has two new doctors working full-time to keep up with waiting lists.

In Swaziland, where the majority of people are Christian although indigenous beliefs are often incorporated into their faith, mothers are a key driving force behind the new trend.

Phindile Maseko, a nurse at Mbabane clinic, fears for her 13-year-old son's future and will do all she can to protect him.

"I decided he needed to do it for safety and for the future. Children are so naughty these days -- they start doing these things so young and then they get sick," she told Reuters at her home in Mbabane. "I want to protect him from all this HIV mess."

Her son Matshidiso said he was initially terrified but that staying alive was more important than upholding Swazi norms.

"HIV doesn't come from Swaziland so maybe you need to protect yourself with something that doesn't come from Swaziland," he told Reuters a week after the operation.

The United Nations is waiting for more studies before making male circumcision part of its fight against HIV, but the U.N. Children's Fund and other health officials in Swaziland are already promoting it.

"In countries in crisis ... we need to put the information out there," said Alan Brody, country director for UNICEF.

MIXED MESSAGES?

Male circumcision is common in the United States and other countries for religious and cultural reasons and to help prevent urinary tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases.

But some health officials in Swaziland worry men could start to think that removing the foreskin is like wearing a "permanent condom," destroying the impact of years of safe sex education.

"I am worried about sending mixed messages," said Janet Khumalo, a counsellor at the FLAS clinic.

Her fears are not unfounded. The South African study showed circumcised men registered a slightly higher level of sexual behavior immediately after the operation, although many health officials say the benefits still outweigh the risks.

FLAS hopes the new trend will push men, usually slow to use reproductive health services, to come in and talk about safe sex, enabling the promotion of other services like condoms.

Mills said there was a risk untrained practitioners might start performing operations on the cheap. Scores of men are killed in South Africa every year in traditional ceremonies.

But he hopes that if further studies confirm the South African research, donors will help countries like Swaziland circumcise all male babies and as many young men as are willing.

"This could be the cheapest and one of the most effective interventions so far in the fight against HIV," he said.

In some cases, persuading men to give up their foreskins seems to be easier than getting them to wear a condom and health officials are not sure why, beyond the obvious fact that circumcision is a one-off event, unlike wearing a condom.

Recently circumcised Titus Shabangu, a 36-year-old driver in playboy sunglasses and a smart shirt, had his own theory.

"Swazi men have heard that it is a good thing and when you play with you partner the sex is good," he told Reuters. "That is why they come."

A South African court has ordered a German doctor to stop publishing statements critical of the country's leading Aids campaign group.

Dr Mattias Rath accused the Treatment Action Campaign of being funded by international drugs firms to help sell their products in South Africa.

The Cape Town high court rejected Dr Rath's argument that his claim was part of a necessary debate on HIV/Aids.

The Rath Foundation says its vitamin supplements can help stop Aids.