Thoughts on Zambian Sex Practices

I spoke with Rachel (aka Summer) today. She is in Zambia working with a British charity and the Zambian government to bring AIDS and HIV awareness to students in rural Zambia. Rachel is in a mining town, 45 minutes by bus outside of Lusaka. There she lives with her Zamibian co-volunteer, Deborah, in a thatched roof hut 12 feet in diameter. Ten feet away is the girls dormitory, where 35 of her students live.

There isn't much room - certainly no spare bedrooms- for privacy in Zambia. So Rachel asked her students where they "do it". The answer - in trees! And in bushes. Well, I guess if you can't do it in the back seat of a car...

Rachel wants to do it with Eugene in a tree when he goes to visit in month or so.

Rachel has polled her students if they have fun having sex. Not one answered an unequivocal yes. They kiss, and then they fit the pieces together. No oral sex. No foreplay. No discussions like "which do you like better, this or this?" They go right from first base to home base. Rachel thinks this would make it very uncomfortable, if not outright painful. No wonder no one thinks it is fun. She, of course, is out to tell them about foreplay and making sex fun.

I think Playboy and Cosmopolitan and such magazines had a huge influence on our culture in bringing the common person's understanding of sex from a primal urge to an enjoyable pastime.

Rachel, the free-love missionary to Zambia. Rachel, the Cosmopolitan cultural ambassador.

But how does one do foreplay in a tree? The missionary position would be impossible. Maybe all those branches are put to good use. Guess if there are enough branches, you can find some of suitable height and separation for any couple. Makes me think of the great apes having sex in trees.

I'm looking forward to a report about sex in a tree. Wonder if I will get one from Rachel? Or Eugene?

Then there is the issue of condoms. "You can't eat a sweet in the wrapper" is the refrain she hears constantly. Rachel discussed the prevalence of AIDs (was it greater than 50% of all pregnant women tested at the nearby clinic?) and the perceived prevalence (the mine clinic just down the road doesn't know the prevalence of AIDS, but supposes it is 5%). She says, "Now are you more likely to have unprotected sex if you think the prevalence is 50% or 5%?"

And have her students had sex? She thinks more than half have. About half of those tried it once at about 13, and it was painful and not fun and they are currently abstaining. The other half continue to have sex. They are mostly "the girls who have sex for money". Who apparently also find it painful, and not fun, but lucrative. The mines are a source of customers.

Rachel does not call her students prostitutes.

So, what about condom use? Rachel explained that there is a division of labor in American culture. It is the guy's job to provide the condom; it is the girl's job to ask for the condom and to put off sex until the guy provides it. Guys get the hint.

But her girls don't ask for a condom. And they believe condoms don't work most of the time. Rachel points out that with regular condom use, only 1% of couples get pregant in a year. 95% of couples who don't use a condom get pregnant in a year. And condoms provide both pregnancy and AIDS protection.

Rachel, the statistician, persuading the Zambians to use condoms.

How does a couple put on a condom in a tree? And where you put it when you are done with it?