Photo by Peter Jakubowski/Anika Wilson

Anika Wilson’s research focuses on informal communications in Malawi.

Anika Wilson learned a key difference between communication in Malawi and communication in Wisconsin as she rode in a minibus along a dusty road in the African countryside.

One of her fellow passengers had a note for a friend in a village along the route. The passenger asked the conductor to toss the note out the bus window as they passed a dirt path leading to the friend’s village, knowing another traveler would eventually pick it up and deliver it.

“He had a certain level of trust that someone would come along and convey it to the person it was intended for,” says Wilson. “This was an established mode of communicating.” 

Wilson, an assistant professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UWM), is interested in all such informal communications systems – gossip, rumor, stories or notes left along the road. 

Wilson (facing camera) visits with Malawian women and admires new babies.

That interest grew out of her own fascination with folklore and oral traditions. A native of North Carolina, she earned her B.A. in Sociology from Duke and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania’s program in Folklore and Folklife.

“As a folklorist, I was interested in learning about patterns and genres in folktales,” she says. Those tales often carry morals and messages. Did modern versions of such informal, small-scale communications exist, and, if so, how were they used? Wilson wondered.  

Studying a modern myth

A Time magazine article about southern Africa, which repeated a rumor about AIDS-related behavior in that area, piqued her interest in the topic. According to that myth, frequently repeated in other Western media, men in southern Africa believed they could be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin. As a result, the article continued, child molestation had increased dramatically in the region.

“I thought, ‘This is appalling,’” says Wilson. “But I also wondered, if the stories about the belief in virgin cures were true, what were people in southern Africa saying about it?” As a graduate student, she soon had the opportunity to go with one of her professors to Malawi on a demographics/sociology research project to pursue her own interest in the myth.

She found that not only was “virgin cleansing” not a cultural tradition, but the people she met in villages in Malawi were appalled at the very idea. “The Ministry of Child Welfare said they were concerned and had heard the stories, but they had not heard of it actually happening.”

However, as she met and talked with people in Malawi, she became intrigued by the way rumors and stories about HIV/AIDS were impacting communities. “I thought I was going to learn about the ‘virgin cleansing cure myth,’ but I learned about something quite different. Women were concerned about staying healthy within their marriages, and they had developed ways of monitoring what the people they were close to were doing and saying to protect themselves.” 

Wilson began her work before coming to UWM in 2007, and has broadened it to look at how informal communications work. Even with LinkedIn and Facebook, many people in America still rely on their personal networks and local rumors and gossip for information, she’s found. “Women still sit on their front porches sharing stories about what is happening in the neighborhood,” says Wilson.

However, her research has focused on Africa because of the important role gossip, rumors and local advice play in the HIV/AIDS epidemic there. Women in Malawi rely on such informal communications in making decisions about intimate relationships, says Wilson. 

“The belief is that rumors are always false,” Wilson says, but that isn’t necessarily the case. “Many rumors contain truths, and for African women they can be an important means of gathering information about what is happening in their community.”

Bonding through gossip

When Malawian women in some regions move away from their families to other villages when they are married, they develop new networks. “For women who are isolated, gossip serves an important role in bonding within their social circle.”

These informal exchanges of information and advice help women learn about HIV/AIDS and, more important, about what their husbands are doing away from home. “They can find out what their husband was doing at the local bar,” for example, says Wilson. Since having concurrent, multiple sexual partners is a factor in the spread of AIDS, that gives wives much-needed information to protect their own health.

A grant she recently received from the UW System Institute on Race and Ethnicity has allowed Wilson to write up her findings and expand her research. She’s now reviewing Malawian court records to see if the information women have about HIV/AIDS is impacting divorce rates there. 

Although Malawi’s civil courts are influenced by Eurocentric principles of human and gender rights, says Wilson, the courts still function in a patriarchal society where a husband’s infidelity alone is not usually grounds for divorce. Wilson is reviewing transcripts to see if the courts are considering HIV/AIDS as a factor in divorces, and how the officials are using that information in property and other settlements. In addition, some women turn to local village courts, presided over by elders, for divorces, so Wilson is also looking at how HIV/AIDS status is considered in those courts.

Her research on informal communications about HIV/AIDS in Malawian villages is important, Wilson says, because those kinds of information-sharing and decision-making methods often don’t get factored into AIDS prevention programs.

“This is information coming from the bottom up, rather than the top down. It’s important to know what people know or believe about the disease and what the people around them are doing. The type of homegrown strategies the women use to avoid AIDS while preserving their marriages or deciding to divorce can be valuable in the ongoing battle against the epidemic in Africa.”

Malawi photos courtesy Anika Wilson

Cattle are an important form of property in Malawian villages and may figure in marriage and divorce settlements.

Gossip, rumors and local advice play an important role in villages, especially for women making decisions in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.