April 3, 1998

He remembers gathering his play-mates around him every day, slate and chalk in hand. He would sit them down and teach again what they had just learned in school. He was a wise, doting instructor, all of six, and they were his quiet, respectful pupils, eager to please. Dixie Maluwa-Banda knew teaching would someday be a big part of his life. What he didn't realize was that it would turn into a matter of life and death.

Fast forward about 20 years to a high-school class in Malawi. In this southeastern African country, surrounded by Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, an animated discussion is going on. Someone asks the teacher what the Christian response to AIDS is. "What is AIDS?" replies a probing Maluwa-Banda. A flutter of hands go up and he selects a student to answer.

"American idea of discouraging sex," says the teen.

Maluwa-Banda is astonished. When most students nod in agreement, he is saddened.

He remembers thinking "It's time to rescue them."

This determination to do something eventually led him across the ocean to a PhD program at the U of A and a counseling practicum at the University of Alberta Hospitals.

Here he saw the faces of people with AIDS, their bodies too hollow to hold even hope. Uncomfortable at first,

wondering whether his clients would accept a counselor from a different culture, Maluwa-Banda found them to be, in fact, very supportive.

"I know times I have cried with my clients and I've told them it is okay to cry.[And] there have been times when, literally, we all had nothing to say. We would just sit there in silence. And to me, I thought nothing was happening," says Maluwa-Banda. The feedback indicated otherwise. "They told me 'Those moments of silence were wonderful. I needed such moments.' "

Maluwa-Banda will bring these experiences back to Malawi where an estimated 12 per cent of the population is HIV positive and people between 15 and 24 make up one quarter of all AIDS cases.

It's not an easy issue to approach in a predominantly Christian country where sexuality and sex education are taboos, says Maluwa-Banda. He first wanted to study adolescent sexuality and HIV/AIDS in Malawi several years ago while completing his master's degree at Brandon University in Manitoba. But at the time, the Ministry of Education in his homeland said it was "too sensitive an issue" and rejected his proposal.

Now, five years later, the Malawi government can no longer ignore the statistics.

With a population of 11 million, Malawi has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. In 1994, an average 25 people became infected, six developed AIDS and five died from it every hour. Today, Maluwa-Banda estimates the death rate from AIDS has more than doubled.

He cites a number of contributing factors: a 60 per cent illiteracy rate, an ineffective media campaign targeted only towards adults, and certain cultural groups who believe in and still practice polygamy.

But it's the lack of a formal sex-education program in schools that Maluwa-Banda wants to change. While a health officer does make presentations on AIDS, sessions are infrequent and there's no one on staff to answer questions outside these sessions. Teachers are neither trained nor inclined to discuss teen-aged sexuality.

Maluwa-Banda doesn't want to break these taboos. He wants to smash them into oblivion.

He's heading back to Malawi soon to conduct his research, armed with a $20,000 Africa Dissertation Internship Award from the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and a $3,200 grant from the vice-president academic's Endowment Fund for the Future (Support of International Development Activities.)

Meanwhile, the health and education ministries in Malawi eagerly await his findings. They plan to base an AIDS awareness program for high school students on his research. And when he returns to his faculty position at the

University of Malawi, he will incorporate his data in courses he teaches for secondary-school teachers.

The taboos do not have much longer to live.

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