Thirty years ago, Lake Mweru in the far north of Zambia had so many fish it was said a man could catch a tonne a day with just two small nets. But few people lived near the great inland sea then, so the fish were barely taken.
But increasing poverty, conflict on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the lake and the closure of Zambian copper mines have lured tens of thousands of young men to the lake to start fishing. Stocks have plummeted alarmingly and there's a saying in the villages that these days it is is easier to catch HIV/AIDS on Lake Mweru than fish.
"This is a crossroads for AIDS. The illness here is terrible," said Mrs Muhone, from the copper belt region of Zambia.
She spends several months a year here, buying salt fish from the temporary fishing camps which line the lakeside then selling them back in the towns.
"People come here from everywhere -- Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi, Congo," she said.
"When they meet, well, you know what nature does. Wherever there are people there are temporary marriages. Men cannot stay without their wives for very long and women may be desperate, so they sell themselves. HIV starts here and moves on. It is very, very common here," she said.
The lake and the camps are the frontline of the disease in Africa. Towns and villages have sprung up from nowhere and a tar road to the south of Zambia makes trade easy. Poor women have flocked in to become sex workers, the borders are porous and there is money around.
The statistics make terrible reading. The aid organization Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) came to Nchelenge, the largest lakeside town, in 2001 and has been testing 400 people a month. One in four people aged 15-49 are HIV-positive. Of these, perhaps 1,500 are at an advanced stage of the disease and need immediate anti-retroviral drug treatment. Life expectancy has dipped below 40 years and there are hundreds of orphans. Almost every family has at least one person with the virus.
MSF estimates that 10,000 people in the villages and towns that depend on the lake are infected. They have put 350 people on anti-retrovirals so far, a figure expected to double in a year as the drugs become cheaper and more available.
Gertrude, a fish trader from the south of Zambia, thought she had caught malaria after coming to the lake -- but did not recover.
"I thought I was OK but I was just not getting better. I could not work," she said.
She tested positive for HIV and is now on anti-retrovirals, hoping to get enough strength to return home.
Doreen is one of at least 80 sex workers in Nchelenge and perhaps as many as 400 in the wider communities. She came to earn money, but finds it difficult to be assertive.
"I am 20, from Congo, but most of the girls are just children. I take one or two men a night, but some have four or five. Some men really do not want to wear condoms. It's hard to get them to. Others offer to pay more for not wearing one. Some tell lies and say they have worn one with me but haven't. Some offer to marry me but they disappear in the morning. We talk about our HIV status. I tell them I don't know it," she said.
But she does. Four months ago she tested negative for the virus and says she does not want to take risks again. But she admits she still has unprotected sex with her regular boyfriend, a married man who says he has not been tested. "I thought I was infected. I think I have learned," she said.
Alex Kunda, who supervises a team of Medecins sans Frontieres counselors, said the young men living and working around Lake Mweru were at serious risk.
"Their mentality is to sleep with as many women as possible. Some see it as a sign of manhood," he said.
"There are many myths about condoms. They say that the lubricants give you a stomach ache, that it is dangerous to `bathe with a raincoat on' [have sex using a condom]. They abuse them. They make footballs out of them. The girls wear them as bracelets. Some businesses pay men in condoms now," said Kunda.
Veronica Muzinga, who employs two fishermen and exports the fish across the lake to towns in Congo, said the disease was rampant.
"It's because people from all over Africa go back and forth across the lake so much. There are many young men. They may have several temporary wives, they give the disease to the women and together they spread it everywhere. I have been coming here for 11 years and it's certainly worse," Muzinga said.
"There have been some good changes in five years. People are more aware. Everyone knows of HIV/AIDS now. Now some of the 18 to 24-year-olds come for condoms," Kunda said.
"They are getting information but we are never sure they are using condoms."
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the