He has just come home from a memorial for six colleagues who died over the past few months, though no one spoke the word AIDS at the service. They keep on passing it at school. Teachers in southern Africa have one of the highest group infection rates, but they hide their status until the telltale symptoms find them out. Plenty of women in bush villages need extra cash, often to pay school fees, and female students know they can profit from a teacher's favor. So the schoolmasters buy a bit of sex with lonely wives and trade a bit of sex with willing pupils for A's.
Some students consider it an honor to sleep with the teacher, a badge of superiority.
The girls brag about it to their peers, preening in their ability to snag an older man. These are men who know better, but they still do it all the time. The workingwoman we meet directs our car to a reedy field fringing the gritty eastern townships of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. She doesn't want neighbors to see her being interviewed. She looked quite prim and proper in her green calf-length dress as she waited for johns outside 109 Tongogaro Street in the center of downtown.