Steering an AIDS-free course : personal prevention strategies of young people in Tanzania

This thesis presents an exploration of the personal HIV/AIDS prevention strategies of young adolescents in Tanzania. Most of the 209 research participants were aged 10-15. They included students, those out of school and ‘street children’. In this multiple method study, the young people participated in focus groups, individual interviews, questionnaires, ranking exercises, and write-and-draw exercises. Most of the participants were motivated to prevent HIV/AIDS and were able to communicate credible strategies. Many participants described tactics related to refraining from sex. Males tended to describe sexual temptation in terms of their own sexual desires, and refraining from sex in terms of the management of those desires. Females tended to describe sexual temptation in terms of the benefits males might offer in exchange for sex and the possible risks of agreement or refusal. Females described refraining from sex in terms of politely refusing, eluding and outsmarting males, and avoiding situations where rape might occur. Male participants who discussed penile-anal sex nevertheless seemed to associate HIV transmission mainly with heterosexual relationships and penile-vaginal sex. In further findings, many participants described tactics related to the prevention of blood-borne infection. Some participants mentioned testing and transmission in mother-to-child and caring relationships. Although most participants agreed in theory that condoms were a good way to prevent HIV/AIDS and that it was acceptable for a male or female to ask a partner to take an HIV test before having sex, relatively few participants included testing or condoms in their strategies. Most pilot study participants were knowledgeable about some aspects of prevention, but demonstrated no knowledge of HIV prevalence. This study indicates a role that national and international leaders, policy makers, teachers, parents and others might play to encourage young adolescents to steer an AIDS-free course, by supporting young people to build on their existing personal strategies of prevention, and to develop and adapt their strategies as they mature. That may support the young people to delay the sexual debut, to prevent HIV/AIDS when beginning and maintaining sexual relationships, to refrain from sex, if they wish, after the sexual debut, and to reduce the incidence of blood-borne transmission, mother-to-child transmission, and transmission when caring for others who may be affected

Brajabuli literature, its content and language, with special reference to Bengal.

The subject of this essay is the Vaisnava literature of Medieval Bengal composed in the Brajabuli language. It is discussed in its three aspects; religion, literature and language. The songs, composed according to the conventions prescribed by the highest authority of the Gauraya Vaisnava school are primarily religious; and they are at the same time literary products some of them of great beauty. In them religious sentiment is expressed in terms of human emotion and passion. The language in which the poems are composed is used exclusively by the Vaisnava poets of the Caitanya sect and has especial features of its own. Therefore for a proper understanding of the works of the Vaisnava poets, these three aspects, must be all taken into consideration. The present essay is an attempt to do so. A summary of the previous work on Brajabuli is given in Chapter I. A survey of the extant materials of Brajabuli and the materials on which the present work is based, is given in the second chapter. In Chapter III is given the etymology, history and interpretation of the word 'Brajabuli'. Chapter IV contains a summary of Brajabuli literature of the provinces other than Bengal. In Chapter V the development of Brajabuli literature of Bengal is discussed. Chapters VI, VII, and VIII introduce the religious aspects, each dealing with a separate topic; the history of the Krsna legend, the Rasa aspect, and the story respectively. The form and style of the poems, like the language, has peculiar features which are considered in Chapter IX. Chapter X contains a summary of the earlier theories on the origin of the Brajabuli language. Chapters XI, XII and XIII, contain linguistic analysis under three main heads; Noun, Pronoun and Verb. Chapter XIV contains an interpretation of the linguistic facts described in the preceeding three chapters