ABSTRACT
With reference to Kapulanga, a squatter settlement on the outskirts of Mongu in Zambia’s Western Province, this chapter examines the way responses to AIDS are influenced by cultural background and historical experience.2 Situated on the edge of the flood plain of the Zambezi river and the capital of Zambia’s Western Province, Mongu is an important commercial and administrative centre. But at a distance some 600 kilometres to the west of Lusaka, it is far from the heart of Zambia’s urban corridor, nor it is on an international border, nor even on a transnational road network. The tarmac road, which leads to the town, was in a state of disrepair during much of the 1990s, making travel difficult and travel times unpredictable. Although the Zambezi river forms an important conduit of transport and trade, its floodwaters also cut the town off from the western part of the province, and Angola beyond it, for several months each year. Yet in spite of this apparent context of relative isolation, AIDS is deeply entrenched in the town and its suburbs. According to national estimates (Ministry of Health, Zambia, 1997), as many as a quarter of Mongu’s adult population were infected with HIV in 1997, marginally fewer than the urban prevalence in that year in several of Zambia’s other provinces, but still a deeply disturbing figure.
