Pygmies seek education on condom use

Pygmies in the village of Gbokila, 26 km from the Central African Republic (CAR) capital, Bangui, have asked that pygmy women be trained on HIV/AIDS, especially on the importance of condom use as a means of prevention, a leader of the community said on Saturday. "Whenever my wife sees a condom she destroys it saying she cannot allow me to throw children in the bush," Aubin Tikitiki told a visiting UN mission headed by the deputy representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Cyriaque Edjo. The team included volunteers working with NGOs dealing with HIV/AIDS. Tikitiki said that an NGO had distributed condoms to villagers in 2002 but the women had thrown them away in the belief that the condoms would encourage their husbands to be unfaithful. "I have seen a condom but have never used it," Tikitiki told IRIN. A UN volunteer programme assistant, Beatrice Malendoma, told the pygmies that the village nurse, Laurent Mbanou, and community workers would organise intensive HIV education among the women, with the support of the UNDP. Mbanou told IRIN that despite the refusal to use condoms, he had not detected any sexually transmitted disease among 200 pygmies in Gbokila. He said this was due to the fact that pygmies avoided intercourse with non-pygmies. Among the 3,000 Gbokila residents, only one non-pygmy man, Desire Timato, had married a pygmy woman. The couple had five children. "She'd never allow me to use a condom," Timato told IRIN.

Pygmy couple, Gbokila, CAR

Mbanou explained to the pygmy women that what was discarded in a used condom was not children "as the husband brings the half and the woman the other half before having a child". He said that apart from preventing diseases, the condom also prevented unwanted pregnancies. The volunteers demonstrated how male and female condoms were used. They also distributed condoms to all Gbokila residents. Meanwhile, the main anti-HIV AIDS NGO in Bangui, Ami d’Afrique, on Saturday distributed food rations to 511 people living with or affected by HIV in two districts of the CAR capital. The administrator of the NGO, Honore Dabanga, said on state-owned Television Centrafricaine on Saturday that the rations, comprising wheat flour, vegetable oil, soya flour and beans, were provided by the UN World Food Programme. According to a study carried out in December 2002 by the Pasteur Institute, 14.8 percent of the CAR’s 3.5 million inhabitants are HIV-positive.