M. Catherine Maternowska, who's done relief work all over the world, recounts visiting a clinic in Swaziland designed specifically to treat and prevent the rampant STDs of truck drivers and the women who service them along the route. While this may sound oddly localized, there's good reason: the country, she explains, is heavily dependent on its many truckers to receive supplies, and they're a contributing factor to the fact that it has "the highest H.I.V. rate in the world: one in three people is infected." And these clinics are set up so truckers are inclined to go: they can visit and get treatment while their paperwork is processed and their vehicles are refueled.

And, of course, the sex workers, many very young, fall victim to disease, too.

I met eyes with a 16-year-old named Mbali. She was thin, with close-cropped hair and a beautiful smile. I offered her a packet of crackers, which she ripped open with her teeth. After wolfing them down, she looked at me and said, "I hate having sex." Her parents were dead; she was unable to pay her school fees, had been abused by an overburdened aunt - and now, like many of the girls, she was a runaway. Nearly one in four Swazi girls is H.I.V. positive, and Mbali is one of them. Her treatment options are limited. "I have nowhere to sleep unless I find a man," she said. "Sometimes I don't have money and food for two days. A man without a condom will pay more, so obviously I say O.K. because I need money."

While the clinic is filled with such stories, its existence is actually encouraging, as it at least acknowledges the problem and goes some small way towards preventing further spread of the epidemic. Explains an article on AllAfrica, quoting one official,

"In Swaziland, denial about AIDS is one factor that has made it almost taboo for families to admit their loved ones passed away from an AIDS-related illness. You won't find AIDS listed as the cause of death on death certificates, and so we have no official number to work with."

And considering that as recently as May, a prominent minister suggested that AIDS and HIV victims be "branded," clearly obtaining treatment is not a simple matter.

Despite its high AIDS and HIV rates, Swaziland is not a country we hear about very much in America; but in any discussion of AIDS prevention and African's women's issues, it can't be denied, and one presumes that Hillary Clinton's stated commitment to prioritizing women's health will include a nation where one in three people has AIDS, and an ever-growing population is turning to sex work. Recently, the U.S. Africa Command held a MEDFLAG program in Swaziland, a "two-week medical exercise" designed to "improve medical disaster preparedness and humanitarian assistance management." While this seems like a drop in the bucket of the nation's problems - and unlikely to address the more immediate "medical disasters" ravaging Swaziland - it's something. Private organziations like those Maternowska refers to are doing important work - but need larger support. And increasing awareness is crucial.

Truck-Stop Girls [NY Times]

Related: Swaziland: HIV/Aids Blamed For 25 Percent Job Absenteeism [AllAfrica]
Timothy Myeni apologises…Again [Swazi Observer]
U.S. Africa Command Opens MEDFLAG 09 In Swaziland [Africom]

The new series, which premieres on Sunday night on HBO, is about Precious Ramotswe, a 35-year-old divorcee played by Grammy winner Jill Scott. After her father dies, leaving her 180 cows and making her a wealthy woman, Precious decides to move from her rural town to Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana, and set up the nation's only female-run detective agency (thus making it "No.1").

The series is based on a popular series of books of the same name by Alexander McCall Smith, who set out to write "a book about a cheerful woman of traditional build." In an interview with Reuters, Smith explained that his books (and the new series) focus on the positive aspects of Africa, rather than the conflicts and crisis on the continent.

"Many outside writers, when writing about African countries concentrate on the bleak, and on what's wrong," said Alexander McCall Smith.

"Obviously, there are problems in many of these sub-Saharan African countries, but there are positive aspects and this series celebrates that," he said.

Some people have criticized the series, saying the sunny portrait of Africa is unrealistic, but Botswana (where the series was shot) is actually one of the most prosperous countries on the continent, and Smith says he didn't want to focus solely on the negative because:

"That's actually treating African countries as being something quite different, mythologized in a sense, made abnormal. Which actually really is, I think, wrong."

The show doesn't focus mainly on solving crimes, but on the lives of Precious and her friends, Grace (Anika Noni Rose), her straight-laced secretary, BK (Desmond Dube), the gay hairdresser whose salon is next door to the agency; and JLB (Lucian Msamati), a lovable mechanic who develops a crush on Precious.

So far, the show has received mostly positive reviews. Ginia Bellafante of the The New York Times writes that the show's feminist theme is interesting, especially in light of HBO's biggest female-focused hit:

[Precious] has longed for the independence of city life, but she loves her printed caftans and bush tea (the equivalent of coffee in a Greek cup on "Law & Order"), contentedly resisting the newly cosmopolitan pressures to remodel her body closer to a Western dictate.

The tension between tradition and modernity is rendered as broad subject and passing detail: in an early scene three young women right out of "Sex and the City: Manolos Below the Sahara" walk by the newly opened No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to ask how a woman could be a detective, and how anyone at all might go undercover who is "the size of a small elephant."

Even if for some reason you're not sold on discussions of women's issues amid beautiful shots of Africa, Jill Scott's peformance makes the show worth checking out, according to the L.A. Times:

Even before we see her on-screen, Scott, a three-time Grammy winner, is a revelation; her summer-glazed creamy tones are the reason the voice-over was invented. Precious slowly tells of her loving father and his insistence that she learn everything a boy would, and soon we learn that, as a child, she solved a village argument over the ownership of a cow. Then somewhere amid the rising white dust and glimmering insects, it becomes clear that this show will restore the premium cable network to its former stature as the most surprising place on television.

No. 1 Lady Detective Series Focuses Cheery Africa [Reuters]
No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency [The New York Times]
'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' on HBO [The Los Angeles Times]

The children, Mika and Anna-Lena, hatched their plan to elope while their families celebrated New Year's Eve together. The next morning the couple, along with their witness, Anna-Lena's five-year-old sister, walked to the tram station 1 km away and took a tram to Hanover central station. There, a guard spotted the group as they were waiting for a train to the airport and called the police. The officers pointed out that the children wouldn't get far without tickets and money and offered them a tour of the police station while they waited for their parents to pick them up. "They can still put their plan into action at a later date," said a police spokesman. [BBC]

[All images courtesy of H&M]