Pina colada and berry flavoured vaginal lubricant.

Green apple-scented condoms.

These are just but a few of the enticements featured at the Condom Project stall at this year’s  18th International AIDS Conference, which opened on Sunday. The organisation, which is part of the larger Condomise Campaign, boasts a stall with an array of colourful condoms, genital lubricants and other aids which the general public are free to sample and taste.

But amid the kaleidoscope colours of sensuality and allure, the female condom still looks unappealing in its white, pink and blue packaging.

As Joy Lynn Alegarres, the Director of Global Operations for the Condom Project, explains, the FC2 female condom, the only condom currently approved for  global use, is undergoing a rebranding (through partners such as UNFPA)and will soon reflect the identity of the various countries where women use it.

“In Bali, the packaging is now pink with a flower on it,” explains Alegarres.

As Maya Gokul of South Africa observes, the female condom is available in over 120 countries of the world and has passed tests of approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

And it can be sexy.

“Since the inner ring is detachable, it is exciting for guys,” adds Gokul. “When the penis bumps against that inner ring it is very sensual.”

She also added that a male partner can use the inner ring to arouse the woman through playing with her clitoris prior to putting the condom on.

And as Nienke Blauw of the Netherlands demonstrated, there are newer models of the female condom that may soon be on the market that can add to the variety for the female condom.  One condom, which is called the cupid and is being developed in India, has a sponge instead of an inner ring which is meant to gave a different sensual experience to the user. Another is cone-shaped and has a tampon-like tip which expands to fit into the inner vaginal lining upon contact with moisture. Unlike other female condoms, it does not use lubricant as it makes use of the woman’s fluids to eventually open up after insertion.

But while innovation around the female condom is increasing, barriers still exist.

“In Zambia, female condoms are going for a (United States) dollar for a pack of two,” explained Carol Nyirenda of the Coalition of Zambian Women Living with HIV.

Prices of female condoms remain much higher than those of male condoms, which means that many women cannot afford to buy the only HIV prevention device that they can control themselves.

Currently, Zambia’s activists are in the process of lobbying the Ministry of Trade and Industry to review and formulate policy for the regulation of the quality of privately imported male and female condoms by 2011.

Also, Nyirenda stressed the importance of educating those who use the condom to do so correctly and consistently, and also to challenge cultural norms that increase women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission, such as marital rape.

“There is need to work on cultural norms which promote the subordination of women, especially in terms of sex, notes Tabona Shoko,the Director of Zimbabwe’s National Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS (ZNNP+), who is an advocate for the female condom. “We need to create leeway for women to negotiate for safer sex.”

Interestingly, Annie Michelle Salla of Cameroon shared that in her country, male military officials had actually requested that rather than train them to use the male condom effectively, they requested that condom promoters train their wives to use the female condom.

The reason?

The men felt that it was important for their spouses to be able to protect themselves since they admitted that they were not responsible enough to do so.

Roli Mahajan, a journalist from India also feels strongly that the female condom should become more widely available and affordable. But when asked how it could be improved, she admitted to never having used it.

Veanne Turczynski from Germany has also never used the female condom but is sceptical about the product. “I cannot imagine that it’s practical to use because it’s hard to handle,” she noted. “It’s so much more complicated than the male condom.”

But with an HIV epidemic that still affects far more woman than men, the female condom remains a tool well worth investing in – for the sake of women’s health.

Rejoice Ngwenya in his latest article entitled the 3G Revolution That Never Was reckons that Zimbabwean corporates like Econet are taking their customers for granted. Read more from Rejoice . . .

One of Zimbabwe’s leading transnational blue chip telecommunication companies, ECONET, is once again promising the local market a miraculous transformation of the country’s Information Communication Technology [ICT]. For several years, the ambitious Strive Masiyiwa-owned enterprise has been trumpeting molten corporate lava on new 3rd Generation platform [3G], spending thousands of dollars in the process to seek attention from habitually technology-averse Zimbabweans. A massive excavation along Zimbabwe’s main trunk road is now been backed with more promises of memorable fibre optic 4G revolution.

If customer satisfaction was measured per capita of advertising and promotional ad spend, ECONET would probably be running out of space on the human utility scale! There are those who argue that a proliferation of ninety base stations in ninety days to support a two million plus subscriber base is the ultimate symbol of success, not to mention high share prices, exciting dividends and healthy bottom line. Others also insist that a company that has a hundred square metre full colour billboards at every major intersection in every major town is a symbol of marketing excellence. No doubt there are similar such experiences across the length and breadth of the African continent. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that market dominance is a precursor to customer satisfaction; rather, it evolves into irritating monopolistic behaviour.

The global corporate graveyard is littered with big spend ventures whose customer satisfaction index – for want of a term – is no higher than the intelligence quotient [IQ] of the cockroach hiding in a dark corner of your laptop case. At one time, it was impossible to send short message services [SMS] on Fridays through the ECONET network, let alone make a call. Their engineers, as expected, had a perfect explanation. Subscriber rates, they mourned, were literally controlled by business-hostile central government regulators, so much so that the use of local Zimbabwe dollar currency rendered sustainable service delivery impossible. The market accepted the explanation, and waited with abated breadth for the day when the nervous ZANU-PF government would allow use of ‘foreign’ currency in local transactions. I remember – ironically with a tinge of trepidation and amusement – that my account was arbitrarily ‘converted’ to pay-as-you-go for reasons only known to the late Egyptian Tutankhamen. My and every account holder’s protests fell on deaf, highly-paid electronic ears.

As fate would have it, we are almost two years into the multicurrency use, but I am yet to experience a ‘phenomenal rise’ in service delivery. When wireless internet provision became fashionable, competition from ‘fixed’ broadband pioneers like Zimbabwe Online ‘inspired’ ECONET to go one up by introducing the mobile 3G ‘dongle’ connect card internet browsers that were billed to take Zimbabwe business a notch up in regional ICT competitiveness. As expected, these promises were bankrolled with expensive promotions and fanfare, and those like me whose survival solely depends on mobile web-based activism, fell to our knees and showered praises to the galaxies. As it turns out, the prayers were premature.

Many months after I and perhaps thousands of other techno-freaks fell into the 3G promotional trap, we are still to experience the beauty of the ECONET ‘inspired’ ICT revolution. Compared to US1 [one United States Dollar] per thirty minutes that ‘fixed’ broadband service providers charge in public internet shops, or the US20 or so dollars levied for a miserly 100 megabytes, I quickly moved onto the USD25 per month unlimited access offered by ECONET’s miracle dongle. This was a gigantic error of judgement, on my part.

For the ten or so months I have been ‘hooked’ to this much heralded 3G system, I can access my internet only an average of two hours per week. On several occasions, I have met my colleagues-in-despair at ECONET HQ, seeking answers from arrogant, stoned-faced young technicians more interested in showing off their latest i-tuners to bamboozled school girls. I have tried to scream, but my voice chokes with anger, and I can only have just enough energy to wobble down the stairs with nothing but a bruised ego.

In the past few weeks, my misery has been incremental, as expected, compounded with a perfect explanation from ECONET that the fibre optic project is ‘interfering’ with our access and that all will be well once the cables are buried! To date, I have probably lost a couple of exciting activist deals due to my lack of communication, never mind the mental stress of dealing with a technology beyond one’s control. Sometimes, as I do now, I feel local ECONET engineers should be rounded up and thrown into an ICT dungeon filled with archaic Olympia typewriters, Moss code, telex, Gestetner machines and discarded valve-type black and white television sets where their reputation can assume a comparative semblance of respectability – that is if they survive drowning in volumes of black duplicating inks, scarlet correction fluids and used machine oils!

The question essentially is: why do ‘successful’ corporates take us customers for granted? Toyota International had a rude awakening, so did British Petroleum. I call it corporate stupor. At a certain stage, the blue chippers get drunk and choke in their own success, paralysed by exciting financial results and moribund with self praise that only immunises them from customer sensitivity. I cannot recall how many cars Toyota had to recall, or how many millions litres of oil BP has so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but my wish is that companies like MTM or CellTel waltz into the Zimbabwe market to give these overzealous chip-on-the-shoulder  players like ECONET a f*****g whipping. Just perhaps, perhaps I might be able to open my Yahoo without having to sing the Khoisan desert anthem 100 times over in Latin. I am a stickler for free market competition, even if I have to lose a network I have been hooked since July 1998. Thus I am agitated by market dominance that has manifestations of monopolistic behaviour. Ninety base stations in ninety days my black a**! Jeeper’s creepers, just give me only one base station in three hundred and sixty five days that WORKS and we will be lifelong pals, Mr Masiyiwa!

Zimbabwean diamonds have been a hugely divisive issue around the world, but within the country’s ruling coalition their lure has become an unlikely unifier among the frequently feuding parties.
Read more from the Mail and Guardian

Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava was recently included in a stellar line up of writers for a special issue of Granta. The theme was sex.

The Fig Tree and the Wasp

It was 1979 and I had just started primary school. That summer was the first time I witnessed what later became known as iskokotsha, a craze that would, in the euphoria of a newly independent Zimbabwe, trigger the focus of motion in popular dance to snake decisively, seductively, up the body, from the feet to the hips – a sex pantomime of outrageously suggestive moves that enthralled our young nation for the decade to come.

Read more

Number plates
These are not required on your vehicle. Even though the new ones could only be made by some senior politician’s company, and they were found to be the same as a neighbouring country’s, and they have a cute little hologram in them, you may drive around for many months without displaying any, front or back. If you are stopped, claim they must have fallen off on the last pothole, they were in your back window but got lost somehow, or if all that fails, give them your license (see below).

License
You are required to drive with a license (or several). The Zimbabwe license is printed in green ink, and has ’10′ printed prominently on it in several places. Should you be stopped for any reason, you are required to hand you license to the ZRP, at which point you will be free to go. Your license will make ANYTHING, okay. Speeding, driving with undue care, having an unroadworthy vehicle, proceeding through a red light, etc. Right of way If your car is bigger, newer, shinier, or more expensive, then you have the right of way. You can go through the lights first, or the intersection if the lights are not working, you have the right o believe that the lights are not working and therefore you can go through, and everyone else must stop. If your car has four wheels, you can obviously go faster than any two wheeled vehicle (with or without motor), and they must give you right of way (you should not even look).

Traffic Lights
You MUST creep forward at the lights. This is easily done if you have a new automatic. Just don’t bother to keep your foot on the brake, and do not take it out of drive. If you drive a manual transmission, you must keep it in gear (do NOT save fuel), and slip the clutch. The reason for this is simple. The lights can see you. And they appreciate you are important and NEED to be somewhere. The lights, therefore, will change more quickly if you creep into the intersection. Even though we can afford super lights, that can see, we cannot afford road marking paint. So ignore where the old stop line used to be, and stop only a paper thickness away from the intersection (even if you cannot see the lights from there) – but do not accelerate rapidly away from that position, finish your cell call first. If this appears to annoy others, in any way, justify yourself (for being slow or fast), as “you thought the lights were broken”.

Overtaking
Multi lane intersections are a good place to overtake, and show off, that you have a faster, newer car and therefore the right of way. Pull into a centre lane (or whichever is empty), and then make a wide (just turn) into the turning lane (right or left). This may also be done, pulling into a turning lane, and then going straight, forcing other traffic to avoid you and turn a newspaper vendor into road pizza (plenty more where they came from). Stopping The yellow curbs, and all yellow lines, do not apply to you. Other people yes, but not you. You may stop there to talk on your cell phone (which is not obligatory, cell phones should be spoken into at speed, both speed of voice, and speed of vehicle). You may stop there while you ‘just dash in’ to pay your DSTV subscription, pick up passengers, unload a delivery of generators, etc, (even though the ‘dash’ includes times spent in two queues). It is recommended you pull into an intersection, and block traffic approaches on the ‘smaller’ road, while you let off passengers into the larger road’s stream of traffic.

Parking
The sign in front of the grocery shop saying, “No Stopping in Front of Entrance” does not apply to you. After all, you are ‘just dashing in’ to get your week’s foodstuffs. And the people coming out with shopping trolleys ‘will control them’.

School zones
The signs that say ‘No Stopping’ are put there (or were put there, many have been conveniently removed or pushed down now) for other parents. No one would DARE turn your ‘precious little bundle’ into a road pizza. And your children are entering a learning institution. Teach them how to be aloof from ‘the laws of others’. Stop right on the pedestrian crossing. Do not pull over where the road widens, but in the narrowest part. Teach your kids to ‘dash’. Looking both ways is someone else’s job. Do not leave the stream of traffic. You will never get back into it again.

Four Way Flashers
If you have your four way flashers on, no other rules of the road need apply. You may stop in a centre lane to let passengers down. You may turn left from a centre lane. You may stop, as long as necessary, to wait for correct change, (and argue about it) from a newspaper vendor. You may stop in a centre lane and change a tyre, or check that noise under the bonnet.

Road repairs
These are best done in the stream or traffic, or potential stream. Do not attempt to pull off to the verge, as someone might miss you. This is especially the case when in hilly country, where there may be blind rises and fast moving traffic. In addition, in hilly country, you must not allow gravity to assist in helping you to clear your vehicle or large truck from the stream of traffic. Intersections are also a good place to break down, and if a repair vehicle comes by and takes yourself and parts away for fixing, on no account must you use gravity, that vehicle, or any labour, to clear the breakdown out of the way, even if only a meter away. People returning to the scene may not find the broken down vehicle.

Your father
is a man in a red beret
1983
Carrying a rifle
a bayonet affixed
blood dripping
A belly slit open.
Your father
is the man in the red beret
trained in Korea
there is blood
and hair
on his boots
An old man’s head
kicked in.
Your father
carries a smoldering gun
the villagers lie dead
They said
they don’t know
were the dissidents are
Your father is the man
in the red beret
forcing  the villagers to sing
as they dig mass graves
for their mothers, fathers…
Your father’s stiff thing
burned into me
at age fifteen:
To emphasise his conquest
he whispered his
name into my ear
as I lay writhing in pain.
Your father
now an army captain
27 years ago
Chopped Mkhluli to pieces
the boy
not a Dissident
who had made
my loins
burn with desire
Your father
27 years ago
gunned down a mere shopkeeper
for being a dissident
Your father
was the man in a red beret
who extinguished
all feelings
of love
of desire
of hope.
Bitterness
hatred
and despair remain.
Your father
was the man in a red beret
who killed everything
in his path,
including chickens and goats.

© Mgcini Nyoni 2010