List of Appendices
3.9 Cultural Context of HIV and AIDS in Yoruba Society
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For the Yoruba, man’s character is of supreme importance in public morality. Bolaji Idowu (1962:157) puts it that “as character makes for good social relations, it is laid upon every member of the Community to act in such a way as to promote always the good of the whole body”. The Yoruba will say of a person: Iwa re laye yii ni yoo da o lejo –
“Your character here on earth will pass judgement on you”. They believe that no sin committed in secret is hidden from God. That is why the Yoruba say, ‘a mokun jale, bi oba aye ko ri o, Oba oke n wo o’ (You who steal in the cover of the night, know you assuredly that if the earthly kind does not see you, the heavenly king (God) does. In fact, it is another way of applying the retributive principle instituted by God himself.
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In a multidisciplinary research conducted by Aderemi Ajala (2007: 61 – 69) on
“The socio-cultural factors influencing the prevalence, care and support in HIV and AIDS among the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria” he discovered that there were five major contesting issues on HIV/AIDS among the Yoruba people:
1. The Yoruba concept of the disease is that it is a chronic sexually transmitted disease, hence in some traditional communities is referred to as ‘ako-atosi’ (virulent gonorrhea). Consequently, they see HIV and AIDS as a sexually transmitted disease caused by sexual immorality; hence, the victims cannot disclose as they would be treated with ridicule and embarrassed and the victims therefore seek treatment secretly. Thus, victims should be seen as immoral and should be made to serve the punishment for their lack of discipline.
2. The Yoruba people have the view that death would not occur without a cause, and that every human being has a destined cause of death. The Yoruba people believe that a person dying as a result of HIV and AIDS infection is destined to die like that.
3. The Yoruba people believed that the statistical prevalence of HIV/AIDS is grossly exaggerated; they claim that it is not as rampant as claimed.
4. The Yoruba people believe that HIV/AIDS is an incurable and fatal disease, and that no amount of care given to people living with HIV and AIDS will avert death.
5. The Yoruba argue that HIV and AIDS is a problem associated with human development process, thus solutions to the problem should focus on the entire development of the society.
Furthermore, the Yoruba people believe that anyone who contacts such disease is to be ostracized from the community so as not to influence or ‘pollute’ others in the society (see Awolalu and Dopamu 2005:134). Lines and boundaries that discriminate against people living with HIV and AIDS at the onset are so strong that anyone infected is regarded to have violated the sexual taboos of the community (Ajala 2007:235). However, it should be noted that with education the Yoruba people are now been influenced to think positively towards people living with HIV and AIDS.
94 3.10 Theorizing Purity Cross-culturally
An expose on culture is mandatory before we theorize purity. Culture has been defined as a whole way of life characteristic of a human society or grouping. Citing the Cultural Policy for Nigeria, Richard Okafor write that culture involves:
The totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempt to meet the challenge of living in theirenvironment, which gives order and meaning to their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religiousnorms and modes of organization thus distinguishing a people from their neighbours (Okafor 1997: 3).
Culture has both material and non-material components. The non-material aspect comprises character, attributes, ideas, desires, values and norms which are expressed in form of customs and folklore (Akintan, 2002: 1-16).
Any discussion on purity must be done within a culture Weltanschauung. It is the people’s cultural practices that dictate the content of their belief and attitude to purity.
Various Yoruba mythology across the ages has described purity as cleanness of body and clothes . Some regard it as spiritual purity where the body is literally punished to make the soul pure. Others see purity in what one learns and says. For the ancient Greek thinkers, purity is an idea of safety, of oneself and others. Sociologists such as (Gordon, 2006) and Douglas (1966) attest that where the concept of purity is operative, safety is central and the society becomes integrated and progressive. Purity is also linked with character (Omoyajowo 1994:97). In this sense, it is equated with beauty. It is believed that God is the giver of character and he only can make a person pure. But this purity rather than being external is an internal quality (Lateju 2008: 39). The binary interpretation of life can be viewed from two perspectives: good or bad. It can be considered as codification of ideas, behaviours and views deep-rooted in meanings, hence it is important to pay attention to cultural symbols, since they label human and social phenomenon (Biobaku 1963:17). For instance Mary Douglas (1966) using cross-cultural examples including the Old Testament, Hinduism and western beliefs in hygiene argued that ‘dirt’ is a symbol for matter out of place in a society’s classification system. Geertz (1957) a proponent of symbolic anthropology also argued that human behaviour is
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fundamentally symbolic and therefore laden with meaning for social actors. For Beals and Hoijer (1971:123-178) men symbolize or bestow meanings upon physical phenomena in every aspect of their daily lives. However, Douglas (1966) indicated that purity and ‘danger’ sensitize people to the need for caution in a particular society, whereas in others it may not. Africans, like the Westerners associate purity with ‘order’.
For instance, certain unhygienic practices are classified as ‘dirt’ which is idoti in Yoruba language. This could have more than one meaning and varies from culture to culture what dirt means (Beals and Hoijer 1971: Marshall 1994; Good 1995). “Human behaviour is symbolic behaviour, and symbolic behaviour is human behaviour, because the mind creates its universe” (Douglas 1975:15-53). However Sperber (1985) said it is not so, arguing that an act does not become social unless it involves more than one person.
Human knowledge is culturally shaped and constituted in relation to distinctive forms of life and social organization (Good 1995). Cultural symbols provide meaning for social phenomena as well as human behaviour; the culture that shapes the history of a people also establishes the frame work for explaining it; hence how a people interpret a phenomenon is important.
Mary Douglas is believed to be the best known contemporary anthropologist who has dealt extensively with the subject matter of purity. In her classic interdisciplinary collection of essays on Purity and Danger, Douglas (1966) examines the various ways in which the human body can be used symbolically as an agent of forming and maintaining identities. Mary Douglas writes:
No experience is too lowly to be taken up in ritual and given a lofty meaning. The more personal and intimate the source of the ritual symbolism, the more telling its message…the body is a model which can stand for any bounded system. Its boundaries can represent any boundaries which are threatened or precarious. The body is a complex structure. The functions of its different parts and their relation afford a source of symbols for other complex structures. We cannot possibly interpret rituals concerning excreta, breast milk, saliva and the rest unless we are prepared to see in the body a
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symbol of society and to see the powers and dangers credited to social structure reproduced in small on the human body (Bowie, 2000:45).
In any scholarly discussion of the concept of purity, cognizance must unavoidably be taken of the context and the agencies. The Yoruba adage, bayi laa se ni’le wa, eewo ibomiran, translated as, This is how we behave in our house (hold)”, comes to mind. In all, Douglas’ illustration of the body as a bounded system finds varying meanings depending on the people and the culture in question. She goes on to give different and remarkable illustrations on the connection between purity rules and social structures cross-culturally. Of focal point is her use of the terms, medical materialism and mystical participation. These are defined respectively as: “attempts to explain away purity rules by reference to scientific, medical, or hygienic principles” and “the assumption that all rituals and regulations of primitive peoples are wholly irrational and have only a magical or mystical significance” (Bowie 2000). The foregoing provides a solid background for our discussion of purity among the Yoruba.