Botswana
Fighting HIV With Circumcision; Getting Depressed About TB
Read parts one, two, three, four, and five of Zeke Emanuel's Africa diaries. Six boys sit on green plastic classroom chairs in gowns with their clothes neatly folded on a side table. Cloth booties cover their feet and lower leg. They smile nervously. They are waiting to be called for a medical circumcision. Eduardo says he is 16 years old, as is his friend sitting next to him. Why are they getting a circumcision? “For hygiene, and for HIV,” they tell us. And their classmates are getting one too. This is the Military Hospital in Maputo, Mozambique.
Growth Spurt
Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, doesn't come up in the news very often. And why would it? There's no war or ethnic strife. The city is poor, but not outlandishly so--in fact, thanks to a stable government and a lucrative mining industry, Botswana is one of Africa's rare economic success stories.
