ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended as a prolegomena to the study of the medico-moral dimensions of AIDS in Uganda. Several issues are involved which we hope to begin to unravel here through our interpretation of the actions of a small organization of students at Makerere University in Kampala in 1988. These include (1) narratives which link beliefs about health and disease to moral and immoral notions of sex; (2) the belief that AIDS and all that follows from it (and precedes it) cannot be contained by official medical explanations, and (3) AIDS in Uganda is an historical event, and, as such, requires processual and historical study: it is a contemporary moment in a much longer history of disease and medicine, morality and material distributions of health and well being in Uganda. The AIDS pandemic in Uganda in 1988 was the historical product of a particular combination of structural forces in its colonial past. This chapter describes the deliberate efforts of a small group of adolescents, college students, to halt the process as they experienced it in the post-colonial present. While it has been recognized that there is need to conduct research into adolescent attitudes and behavior in connection with AIDS (Lindenbaum 1987:59) we know of no other studies that focus on adolescents as self-conscious agents in AIDS intervention in Africa.
