Rhoda Nafziger '01 got Nigerian students talking

In May, Rhoda Nafziger, a BC senior majoring in sociology, boarded a plane for home. The month before, the U.S. State Department had warned against making the trip.

The government's warning had been addressed to all US citizens considering a visit to Nigeria; reading like a rap sheet, it ran down the dangers of Africa's most populous (and newly democratic) country: "violent crime, committed by ordinary criminals as well as by persons in police and military uniforms," "kidnapping for ransom," and various scams. A Consular Information Sheet offered more details, citing unauthorized vehicle checkpoints; the crossfire of Christian-Muslim "disturbances"; and the penalties for taking photographs of government bridges, airports, or "official-looking" buildings.

That is not the Nigeria that Nafziger knows. "Nigeria is just home," she says, sitting on a shaded bench in front of Bapst Library. Her home city of Jos is a "very quiet," peaceful place high in the mountains, blessed with temperate weather. Nafziger, a soft-spoken young woman, talks about the beautiful marketplace, the vegetables and vendors, and how there are more tribes in Jos than she can name: The town attracts refugees from all over Nigeria.

And that travel warning? It's the same one the US government has been issuing for years, she says. How would a travel advisory for New York City read?

Nafziger's trip home to see her mother, a businesswoman in Jos, wasn't strictly for pleasure. As last year's recipient of the Amanda V. Houston fellowship, named for the first director of BC's Black Studies Program and awarded to a student of African descent, Nafziger elected to spend the summer in Jos with the goal of establishing a grass-roots program to combat AIDS. The disease has interested Nafziger since high school; it has preoccupied Africa for years. Nigeria's AIDS rate is not at the epidemic level found in other parts of Africa, but at 5.4 percent of the adult population, it is nearly nine times the US rate.

Once on the ground in Nigeria, Nafziger says she "went on a scavenger hunt," rooting out general attitudes and perceptions about the disease: "I talked to doctors, teachers, taxi drivers . . . just to find out what they knew about AIDS." A general fear of AIDS, reports Nafziger, was in the air in Nigeria. But her original goal of building a community-based outreach program lost some of its shine when she found many people already doing what she had hoped to pioneer. Jos had a coordinator in place tied to AIDS programs statewide; nongovernmental organizations were channeling foreign grants into initiatives such as counseling and education; and the new civilian government in Nigeria was making headway against the disease where the previous military regime had shown only indifference. A government program for secondary-school teachers, for instance, called "Faith-based AIDS Awareness," had begun providing training in teaching sexual morality, using separate Christian and Muslim curricula.

This left Nafziger wanting to apply herself where she could be of the most use, and the need she found she could fill related directly to her major. What Nafziger says has been lacking in Nigeria is detailed demographic studies of the disease's carriers; breakdowns of how different segments of the population acquire AIDS and pass it on; and data on local attitudes, perceptions, and awareness.

One fact about AIDS in Nigeria that is widely acknowledged is that the disease has hit young people from ages 15 to 25 the hardest. Nafziger visited eight local schools and conducted surveys of secondary students in focus groups of eight to 10, boys separate from girls. The response was enthusiastic. "In every school I went to, when I asked for 10 volunteers," Nafziger recalls, "I got 40." The students, says Nafziger, were "pretty surprised" that someone--especially one of their elders--was bothering to ask them their thoughts, questions, and fears about AIDS, sex and sexuality. Nigerian students assume that elders do not speak about such things to young people, and indeed would not bother to ask a young person's opinion about anything.

One of Nafziger's most salient findings was that young people in Nigeria are not unlike young people in the United States when it comes to the subject of sex and AIDS. Among both groups there are myths and misconceptions about how AIDS is contracted; there is fear about the disease and curiosity about sex (Nigerian youth, discussing sex, snicker and giggle just like their US counterparts); girls are reluctant to insist that their boyfriends wear condoms; boys are timid about asking for condoms in the local pharmacy. Nigerian culture, says Nafziger, casts every elder in the role of protective parent: If a young man tried to buy condoms, it wouldn't be uncommon or untoward for the man or woman behind the counter to retort, "What do you think you're doing, having sex at your age?"

"A lot of people don't use condoms," Nafziger says, "because they think they're not going to work [anyway]." Rumor has it that Nigerian-made condoms are defective, and young people believe (erroneously) that there are microscopic holes in all condoms through which HIV can pass. Nevertheless, Nafziger favors a "condom-based" approach to fighting AIDS in Nigeria over a "religion-based" abstinence message. Lower-class Nigerians, she says, often don't have a strong religious upbringing.

After her summer fellowship, Nafziger remains hopeful for her country. In Jos, she says, the buses are extremely crowded (the US State Department warns travelers off them), and when two Nigerians start having a debate, soon the whole bus joins in. "Nigerians can get through any problem by talking," says Nafziger, smiling--and with democracy in place now for more than a year, the air feels a little more open in Jos.

Nafziger presented the findings of her fellowship to an audience at Boston College in October. After graduation, she plans to get her Ph.D. in public health and eventually return to Nigeria to work in the country's National Youth Service Corps.

Timothy S. Lemire

Timothy S. Lemire '89 is a writer living in Natick, Massachusetts.


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