The Life and Death of a Street Boy in East Africa Everyday Violence in the Time of AIDS
This article focuses on the life history of a single street boy in northwestern Tanzania, whom I name Juma. I suggest that Juma’s experiences and the life trajectory of him- self and of significant individuals around him (particularly his mother) were struc- tured by everyday violence. I describe everyday violence in terms of a conjuncture between macrostructural forces in East Africa (including a history of failed devel- opment schemes and the contemporary political economy of neoliberalism) and the lived experience of individuals as they negotiate local, contextual factors (including land-tenure practices, the power dynamics between immediate and extended kin, life on the streets, and constructions of gender and sexuality). I suggest that AIDS and its many impacts on Juma’s life course can only be understood in a broader context of everyday violence. From this basis, I draw several general conclusions regarding AIDS prevention and intervention strategies.
Keywords: [violence, AIDS, East Africa, street children]
If you knew that all your days life will always be like this with blood flowing daily and men dying in the forest, while others daily cry for mercy; if you knew even for one moment that this would go on for ever, then life would be meaningless unless bloodshed and death were a meaning.
—Ngũgı̃ Wa Thiong’o (Weep Not, Child 1964)
This article examines the experiences and circumstances surrounding the life of a single street child in Mwanza, Tanzania. In doing so, it draws parallels between this individual’s life course and wider social and economic patterns that shape the lives and experiences of street children generally. The study frames the conjuncture and interplay between macrostructural forces and the lived experience of street children in terms of everyday violence, it and situates their vulnerability to AIDS within a violence paradigm. It suggests that multiple forms of violence have come to define the life course of East Africa’s street children—and a growing number of children
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MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Vol. 22, Issue 1, pp. 94–115, ISSN 0745- 5194, online ISSN 1548-1387. C© 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1387.2008.00005.x