The Wisdom We Need to Fight AIDS - New York Times

Interesting perspective from David Brooks, NYT columnist, on AIDS prevention in Africa...
The Wisdom We Need to Fight AIDS - New York Times
Xai-Xai, Mozambique

There's a church in southern Mozambique that is about 10 yards long, with a tin roof and walls made of sticks. Women gather there to sing and pray and look after the orphans of AIDS victims. When you ask those women and their pastor what they tell people to prevent the spread of AIDS, the first thing they say is that it's important to use condoms.
They also talk about the consequences of unsafe sex. But after a while they slip out of the language of safety and into a different language. They say, "It is easier for those who have been touched by God to accept when a woman says no." They talk about praying for the man who beats his H.I.V.-positive wife, and trying to bring him into the congregation. They have polygamists in their church but say God loves monogamy best.
The problem is that while treatment is a technical problem, prevention is not. Prevention is about changing behavior. It is getting into the hearts of people in their vulnerable moments - when they are drinking, when they are in the throes of passion - and influencing them to change the behavior that they have not so far changed under the threat of death. ...

It's about these and a dozen other things - trust, fear, weakness, traditions, temptation - none of which can be fully addressed by externals. They can be addressed only by the language of ought, by fixing behavior into some relevant set of transcendent ideals and faiths...

The most subtle analysis of human nature I heard came in that church made of sticks.