Background and context of Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia
Kapiri Mposhi has a population of 269,000. The town covers an area of approximately 45,000 km. The urban area is highly concentrated, while rural areas are sparsely populated and often difficult to access. The rural area consists of several villages headed by senior heads, each with more than 200 people in his village. Kapiri Mposhi borders some seven districts – Chibombo, Kabwe, and Mkushi in Central province. Masaiti and Mpongwe in Copperbelt Province, and Kasempa in North-western Province.
Kapiri Mposhi is a huge transit point, from Lusaka right through to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and on to the Northern Province and into Tanzania. Kapiri Mposhi is also a terminal point for Tanzania – Zambia Railways. It is a big and busy corridor – a focal point of trade, providing a market for diverse commodities and a place for the rural population to buy consumable goods. It is also a focal point for travellers, and an intersection of farm and livestock trade by small-scale farmers. This has also made it a centre for the sex trade, which contributes to the challenges of HIV and AIDS.
Key drivers of the sex trade (increasingly for young women), are long distance truck drivers and their co-workers, second-hand clothes traders, maize and livestock traders, and those in the fish trade. Long-distance truck drivers and their co-workers reside in town where there many are restaurants, bars, lodges that are frequented by commercial sex workers. Sex for fish is also common. Sex for fish involves compromise between the fish trader – mostly women – and the fisher, mostly men. People also come from Copperbelt towns and Kabwe to do business in Kapiri Mposhi. During harvest time, which falls between May and August, Kapiri Mposhi is a hive of activity as men make money from the sale of produce.
Residents trade with rural traders, fishmongers, truckers and other passing traffic and they provide services and amenities targeting their visitors at restaurants, lodges and bars. As a geographic intersection of three populations – town residents, traders and highway traffic – Kapiri Mposhi has become an intersection in the sex trade and a centre of high disease transmission, to locations both near and far.
According to 2004 Ministry of Health/National AIDS Council estimates, the provincial HIV prevalence rate for Central Province is 14.4 % of those aged 15 to 49. With HIV prevalence at 18.5 %, Kapiri Mposhi has among the worst infection rates in the Central Province. It is also higher than the national average of 15.5%.
Knowledge about sexually transmitted infections and HIV and other health issues remains extremely low among people most at risk. They are not open to information either, as they try to avoid giving the impression that they have something to do with prostitution. Commercial sex workers also have insufficient information to protect themselves physically and to defend their rights.
As Bathsheba, director of SKOWA, comments: “most commercial sex workers and drivers are aware that HIV could be transmitted through unprotected sex with an infected partner. However, misconceptions about routes of HIV transmission still exist. For example, some people still believe that HIV can be transmitted by sharing the same eating utensils or clothes with an infected person”.
The increase in sex trade is also linked to Zambia’s increasing poverty in rural areas. Poverty and lack of options have pushed some people into sex work, putting themselves and others at higher risk of HIV. The residents’ plight has been worsened by the job losses that followed the privatization and subsequent closure of local industries (such as the Kapiri Mposhi Glass Factory) in the early 1990s, leading to large-scale retrenchments.
In Kapiri Mposhi, as in other parts of the country, marriage of multiple wives is widely practiced among Tonga settlers. This leads to situations where brothers inherit cattle or property but leave the surviving children to be cared for by the mother’s side. Sexual cleansing is also part of the process of inheriting the deceased’s spouse and poverty. Sexual cleansing of a surviving spouse is a traditional ritual which is being discouraged because it helps spread HIV.
There is a government hospital in Kapiri Mposhi which provides some hospital care as well as voluntary counselling and testing, sexually transmitted infection services and general health services. However, hospital staff alone cannot provide sufficient care to those who need it.
