Health workers across southern Africa agree, however, that traditional cultures had strict rules governing sexual relationships. Those codes have broken down and nothing has replaced them. Now, Mukoroli said, wives never know about their husbands' other women. Men take lovers furtively. Many traditional cultures frowned on premarital sex.
Health workers say many male secondary-school teachers sleep with their female students.
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, infection rates among teenage girls are significantly higher than for teenage boys. Infected by older men, the girls then infect boys their own age. Changing behavioral patterns are not restricted to men, AIDS workers say. Traditionally, women were not supposed to enjoy sex. Increasingly, however, they are asserting their own sexual needs and priorities.