Next target in AIDS fight: sugar daddies

It started with an innocent-enough invitation to a young beauty named Brenda: It was from a longtime family friend - a high-school teacher with a wife and children, who brought presents for everyone when he came to visit. He asked Brenda to go away with him, alone, on vacation to a lush national park.

At first, Brenda worried something bad would happen. But her favorite aunt encouraged her: "He's a good man," she said. "Go ahead."

Thus began the slow seduction of Brenda by a man 27 years her senior. And was it so bad? After all, her aunt approved - even if Brenda was too scared to tell her mom. Plus, he gave Brenda lots of goodies, making her friends envious. But before she knew it, Brenda became part of Africa's "sugar daddy" culture - a widespread but quiet fact of life on a continent where young women are often economically and socially vulnerable. Yet now the phenomenon is increasingly being tackled as a key social and moral factor in the spread of AIDS.

The consequences of the sugar-daddy phenomenon are significant - and mostly have to do with the limited view young women have of themselves, says Patience Namanyagulu, a university student and leader of "Go Getters," a program that persuades women to rebuff sugar daddies. "If we fail to see the potential in ourselves," she adds, "we face the consequences alone."

Indeed, 10.3 percent of Ugandan women aged 15-24 have HIV/AIDS, compared with 2.8 percent of men, according to a 2003 government report. Experts attribute the gap largely to sugar daddies. Also, a Columbia University study found that women aged 15-19 whose partners were 10 or more years older were at double the risk of contracting AIDS than those with partners 0 to 4 years older.

But for Brenda, the joys outweighed the risks, at first. The three-day vacation was fun and innocent, she says. Nothing happened. But then he told her he wanted to date her. When she hesitated, he insisted. He even said the fact he hadn't forced himself on her at the park proved his good intentions. When she relented, he showered her with presents such as shoes, earrings, and - after a month of dating - a new cellphone.

Her friends even got jealous. "I wish I could have a man like yours," they'd tell her. "It was prestigious for me," she says. Besides, Brenda's dad had disappeared long ago, and this man "was really caring," she says. "He took me as his daughter."

But his intentions were far from fatherly. He wanted sex, and she couldn't say no, she says. He refused to use any protection against AIDS, but reassured her: "If you get pregnant, I'll look after the kid."

Studies find older men represent a far-greater AIDS risk for young women. They're more likely to have HIV/AIDS than younger men, and, as sugar daddies, they often prevail over a woman on the issue of protection. "He will give you all the things you want, but you have to follow his rules," says Tirisa Bonareri, a grad student and member of the Go Getters club.

Page: 1 | 2