Musa Sadock

Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) constitute a major health problems. They afflict all social groups, yet many works on STDs are synchronic and focus on specific social populations. This study reconstructs the forces underlying the spread of STDs and responses to them across all social populations in the Mbozi district from 1905 to 2005. The project involves the collection of archival and oral information in Dar es Salaam and the Mbozi district, and argues that the high prevalence of STDs is associated with varied socio-economic, cultural and political factors. It examines the factors of stigma, marital conflicts, government interventions, and the control of the sexuality of the marginalized. In this era of HIV/AIDS pandemic, this project provides us with past lessons that could be applied in our current efforts to combat the pandemic.

This study examines the Mbozi society`s responses to the plight of marginal groups attributed to HIV/AIDS for the past three decades. The groups in question include: people suffering from and or living with HIV/AIDS, AIDS related widows and orphans, and the elderly caring AIDS orphans. Rather than focusing synchronically on the responses from the international community, government and Non-governmental organizations as has been done by many studies, this study concentrates on the ordinary people`s responses at the grass-root level. It argues that human beings have agency and coping abilities to the plight. By drawing on documents and interviews of people at the grass-root level, this study not only brings to the fore the voices of the marginalized and people`s agency and resilience in the context of HIV/AIDS pandemic but it also adds to the growing body of knowledge on social exclusion in Tanzania in particular and Africa as a whole.