Saturday, May 8, 2010

Transition

This post is to let everyone know that I will no longer be producing Tiyeni Tipewe on Radio Yako. I am going to take some time to explore ways to bring communities in different countries together around issues of health and social justice. I will of course continue to share the stories I brought back from Malawi, as I believe that they need to be heard.

I have really appreciated the opportunity to produce this show, and am grateful to Radio Yako for creating the space for it. THANK YOU to all of the listeners for your support and participation. Please check the blog for news on how this project is growing, and for updated information from people interviewed in Malawi last year. Keep in touch!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Dorothy


A few days ago, I learned that one of the women I interviewed last summer, Dorothy, passed away on October 20th. She was HIV positive and after discovering in August that she had full-blown cancer, she left Lilongwe for her village so that she could die there.

I met Dorothy through Tilerane Orphan Care, one of the community-based organizations that The Pendulum Project and the Face-to-Face AIDS Project assist. She was a volunteer there and always made me feel very welcome whenever Arichie and I visited. Our interview took place in her house, with her seven year old son sitting a few feet away, by the door. Through our conversation, I found out that he didn't know her status, though she had been speaking freely of it in his presence. Dorothy's husband had died five years earlier, and so their eight sons are now struggling to get by in their absence.

Her death, and the amount of time it took me to know of it, brought me to tears the other day. As I wondered about my ability to do this work, good friends I've met through this project reminded me that Dorothy's death and the difficulties her sons are facing only reinforce the importance of getting people's stories heard. And of staying connected. For information on how you can help Dorothy's children, please contact Ken Wong, the director of Face to Face AIDS, at: director@facetofaceaids.org



Thursday, April 8, 2010

Tiyeni Tipewe: April 3, 2010

April 3, 2010: Listen
Topic: Work being down out in the community.
On the show with me: Bernard Glassman (North Carolina) and Chris Chibwana (Indiana)

Lawyer Shima Baradaran to talk about HIV Bill

On Saturday, April 10th, our guest on Tiyeni Tipewe will be Shima Baradaran, a lawyer and lecturer in criminal law at the University of Malawi, and former Fulbright Senior Scholar in Malawi. She has been consulting with some of the NGOs in Malawi who have some objections to the current draft of the HIV Bill (that would criminalize transmission of HIV).

Shima is actually heading to Malawi next week to join these organizations in presenting their position paper to Parliament ... but first, she wants to hear from you! What do you think the organizations and the Malawian government need to hear? Please:
  • comment here on the blog
  • email me your comments about this issue (stein.kathryn@gmail.com) before Saturday
  • join us live on April 10th at 6pm Eastern (radioyako.com)
  • Call in using Skype or send in your comments during the show
Shima sent me this draft copy of the position paper to put up on the blog. Please note, and let others know, that it is still being finalized - this is not the final version. Also, you may have to enlarge the font.


I'm glad I read the paper, and was surprised at some of the details of the proposed bill and impressed at the work of the many organizations that have joined together in fighting for changes to it!


Thursday, April 1, 2010

Just wait and see

Some really exciting changes are coming to Tiyeni Tipewe! Listen this Saturday, at 6:00 pm (eastern time) on radioyako.com. Talk to you soon!

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

ABCs and HIV ... teachers need training too

Ruth Kamchacha, Senior Training Officer for the sex workers in Lilongwe who recently protested the bill to criminalize the transmission of HIV, wrote about some of the work the she and others are doing. (See her comment under "Criminalizing transmission," below). I must say that after reading what she wrote, I was so impressed at her commitment toward raising awareness, protecting lives and rights, and bringing individuals and communities together for better health and real social change.

On the show, we've been talking about education and health, and I believe that work that is interactive, honors the stories of individuals involved, and takes place out in the community (such as that described by Ruth Kamchacha) is crucial to the fight against HIV. For another example of some empowering work related to education and health, here is a video by Theatre for Change, which works in several countries, including Malawi. This 12 minute video begins by providing information on the situation of HIV/AIDS in Malawi, including the story of one HIV positive teacher, and moves into clips from a project that is being done with men and women training to be teachers. This project's goal is to both reduce the rates of infection among Malawi's student teachers and train them in tools that they in turn can use to educate their students about subjects such as HIV and sexual rights.


Saturday, March 27, 2010

No show tonight

There will be no Tiyeni Tipewe tonight, but count on tuning in (and even emailing or calling in!) next Saturday, April 3. The show will continue to be live on radioyako.com at 6pm eastern time.

Remember to keep an eye on this blog so you don't miss the conversations that go on between shows. As always, your participation is welcome!

Friday, March 26, 2010

2.5 billion condoms

South Africa's trying to get medication to 80 percent of those who need it and cut HIV incidence in half by next year. This April, health workers will begin a campaign that includes testing 15 million people, passing out 2.5 billion condoms (100 per person tested!), treating victims of rape, and encouraging male circumcision.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Criminalizing transmission

I saw this Nyasa Times article on a Tiyeni Tipewe listener's Facebook page:



There's a lot to talk about. Please read the article, and the responses that follow it. I will be including it in the program on Saturday. What are your reactions to the issues the article brings up? What was not addressed? What do you think about the law that's being proposed? Share your thoughts here and on Saturday! You can do both!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Funding girls to stay in school

Since we've been talking about education and health on Tiyeni Tipewe, my friend Amber sent me these two working papers about a program in the Zomba district of Malawi, one of the world's poorest areas with some of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS.
Amber wrote:

Two papers from a fairly "cutting edge" intervention for schooling and HIV risk among adolescent girls in the Zomba area run by the World Bank. The project gives the equivalent of 10 USD plus school fees to adolescent girls conditional on school attendance. The findings are encouraging, and although there are many many conditional cash transfer projects running in Latin America/elsewhere, this is the first rigorously evaluated that 1) randomizes conditional requirements (attendance rates) and 2) gives cash directly to girls and 3) focuses on HIV prevention as an explicit outcome. This research is fairly high profile and has potential to influence other similar projects being designed and evaluated--for example in South Africa and Yemen by the Bank and partner organizations.

She added that:

Of course, as always, there are people who have issues with this kind of experiment -- namely, how sustainable or what is the scale up potential for this kind of project versus say a school quality improvement. But, good that we are getting some results like this anyway.

Thank you, Amber!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

28 Stories of AIDS in Africa

During last week's show, I read a paragraph from page 170 of Stephanie Nolen's book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa. I just realized that this excellent book also has a really good website with photos, links to organizations working in featured countries, and video clips.


Chapter 13 is about Alice Kadzanja, a Malawian nurse in the Zomba district of the country. Click on "The Stories" and you can find her photo and read a short paragraph about her.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Video: Mary's story - village life in Malawi

A friend sent me a link to this video. Please share your thoughts. Here's the site's description:

Set in rural Malawi, this 6 minute film follows the life of Mary, a widow with 8 children. Her struggles are struggles of millions of women throughout the world. A film from ICRAF* and ILRI** for International Women's Day 2010.

*World Agroforestry Center
**International Livestock Research Institute

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

HIV and Youth

Those of you who heard the February 20th Tiyeni Tipewe will remember caller Richard Zule- Mbewe, who shared some statistics and a little bit about his experience working with HIV positive children and youth in Lilongwe. I emailed him the other day to see if he would provide some of that information here on this blog.

Please check out the publication below - it's four pages long and has great information, photos, and even an interview with Richard. Oh, and the country profiled is ... Malawi!!

Missed It?

Thank you to Radio Yako's Paul Ncozana for making the recording of last Saturday's show available! From now on, all shows will be added to the Show Archive page. Some information cited in the show was from UNESCO's 2010 "Education for All - Global Monitoring Report" (see Resource Exchange).

Feburuary 27, 2010: Listen

Theme: the importance of education, especially that of girls and young women.

Interview clips:

  • Liknus J, age 16 (interpreter, Mara Banda)
  • Nola K, age 19 (interpreter, Arichie Kaliza)

Saturday, February 27, 2010

School Fees - Lilongwe

Since I kept forgetting to ask secondary school youth in Malawi how much their school fees were, I asked Chris Chibwana (who has commented several times on this blog) for an estimate. He wrote:

It depends...
Public schools are the least expensive, ranging from K7,500 ($49.42) to K15,000 (
$98.85) per term (there are 3 terms in a year). BUT you either have to be very smart to make it there from primary school and/or be related to or have connections with someone in power (a politician or an officer with some level of control in the Education Ministry).
That leaves the majority to scramble for places in privately-owned secondary schools where you would expect to pay anything upwards of K15,000 per term (the more costly, the higher quality the instruction).
I hope that helps.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Tiyeni Tipewe: February 27, 2010

This week I'll be playing some clips focused around education (young people's access to both basic education and HIV/AIDS information). Feel free to write or call in with questions or comments about this or anything else you'd like to discuss.

Saturday, 6:00 pm on radioyako.com

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Tinali, one of the callers last night, asked whether I did research before going to Malawi. More specifically, she referred to research on local culture (in areas of the country I would be working) and the impact that my presence might have on interviews. For information on local culture, I went to Mara Banda and Ellen McCurley (Pendulum Project). For more general information and advice, the list of people I sought out is long. I also looked to articles, studies, and books, and read about work that was being done in different parts of the country.

But now, Tinalii’s question makes me wonder, what books, articles, websites, studies, movies, etc, would any of you recommend to someone going to do work in Malawi? For example, as I mentioned yesterday, I might be presenting for a class of university students who will be going to Malawi this summer. I’d love to offer them some of your ideas.

Could we get a list going on this site?

Okay, the live Tiyeni Tipewe show last night convinced me that I need to get this blog going again. Thank you to everyone who listened to the show, and of course to those who called or wrote in. I hope our discussions won’t stop after each show, but will continue here on this blog.

Just a quick note for now, on a less serious subject. On the show, Paul Ncozana asked me if there’s something I miss from Malawi, and I answered “nsima.” I explained that I was taught how to make it, but that I don’t think it’d be as good here.

I think I should explain. Here’s the thing, it’s not just the nsima, but the experience I associate with it. Sharing a meal as a group, eating with my hands (to the amusement of those around me who were better at it than I was), visiting people in their homes. Something that I loved about being in Malawi was that people always had time. It didn’t matter if we showed up unannounced; they would sit and chat for a few minutes or a few hours, and always seemed happy to see us.

And Paul, here’s my nsima lesson with my friend Edna Chiunda. This is the first time I met her. When Arichie and I entered her house, she greeted us, and then handed me a chitenje to wear over my jeans. People said the nsima was good - and even took seconds!