The Depth of Culture

One of the driving forces of the HIV/AIDS epidemic here in Lesotho is multiple concurrent partners (MCP). Many people have a "main" partner, like a husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend and then one or more on the side. This is the NORM. Many wives know for a fact that their husbands have a girlfriend on the side in the camp town and or in South Africa. It goes both ways as well. Wives often times have boyfriends in a nearby village or in the camp towns. So why is this so? Many basotho (almost all) are loyal Christians and regular church goers. I don't know much about the bible myself but doesn't it preach monogamy and staying faithful? Or maybe the missionaries left that part out when they arrived in this mountain kingdom in the 19th century and encountered King Moshoeshoe (Lesotho's founding father) and his 30 something wives. Traditionally, Lesotho was a polygamous country (is it still?) with men taking as many wives as he could buy with his cows. Bride payment is done with the exchange of cows. The going rate today for your average bride is 6 cows. But I myself have never met a masotho man with more than one wife. So does this mean that Lesotho is a polygamous or monogamous country? In my opinion it is very much polygamous. No, men are not taking more than one wife (in my encounters), but they are taking more than one partner. So fine, have your cake and eat it too. Have a girlfriend in South Africa while you work at the mine. Have a boyfriend in a nearby village while your husband is away in the mine. But why not protect yourself? Why not use a condom? This is a very difficult question to answer. For women it is much more difficult to have a say over sexual decisions. If a man does not want to use a condom, one is not used. And if a woman refuses to have sex, she has severed that relationship, and everything that goes along with it, like money, food, a cell phone, etc. The issue is complicated and has many different dimensions. But why the hell are men not taking more responsibility to protect themselves and the women they love? To many questions and not enough answers. So what's the solution? Do we push culture change and call it behavior change? Is polygamy a bad thing? Hell if I know, but I do know if something doesn't change basotho will one day become a lost civilization that school children learn about in history class.