Readers of Paula Treichler will recognize the allusion to her groundbreaking work, which examines the discursive construction of HIV/AIDS. I have taken the list below from IRIN/Plus News (via Jeremy’s blog, where I came across it).
Angola
Portuguese
- Pisar pisar na min – Contracting HIV is like having “stepped on a landmine”
- Bichinho – “Little bug” (the virus)
Kenya
Kikuyu, spoken mainly in central Kenya
- kagunyo – “The worm” (euphemism for HIV)
Nigeria
Hausa, spoken mainly in the north
- Kabari Salama aalaiku – Literally translates as “Excuse me, grave” (reference to AIDS)
- Tewo Zamani – Translates as the “sickness of this generation” (another reference to AIDS)
Igbo, spoken mainly in the east
- Ato nai ise – “Five and three” (5 + 3 = 8, and “eight” sounds like “AIDS”)
- Oria Obiri na aja ocha – “Sickness that ends in death” (euphemism for AIDS)
Yoruba, spoken mainly in the west
- Eedi – “Curse”
- Arun ti ogbogun – “Sickness without cure”
Pidgin, the unofficial lingua franca
- He don carry – “He carries the virus”
English
- HIV – He Intends Victory (acronym of HIV and a phrase popular among born-again Christians)
South Africa
IsiXhosa and IsiZulu
- Udlala ilotto – “Playing the lotto” /ubambe ilotto – “won the lotto” (said of someone suspected of being HIV positive; Lotto is the national lottery)
- Unyathele icable – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
English
- House in Vereeniging – (Acronym of HIV; “bought a house in Vereeniging”, a town about 50km south of Johannesburg, refers to someone suspected of being HIV positive)
- Driving a “Z3″/ “having three kids”/ the “three letters” – All refer to the three letters in the HIV acronym
- Tracker – If you are suspected of being HIV positive people say God is tracking you, like the popular southern African service that tracks and recovers stolen vehicles
Tanzania
KiSwahili
- amesimamia msumari – “Standing on a nail”; euphemism for being skinny, or being small enough to fit on a nail’s head, referring to AIDS-related weight loss
- kukanyaga miwaya – Contracting HIV is like “stepping on a live wire”
- mdudu – “The bug” (refers to HIV)
Uganda
English
- Slim – Euphemism for HIV/AIDS as a result of the associated weight loss; less popular since the advent of ARVs
Luganda, spoken mainly in the central region
- Okugwa mubatemu – You have been waylaid by thugs (contracted HIV)
Zambia
Nyanja, spoken mainly in the east and the capital, Lusaka
- Kanayaka – “It has lit up” (refers to a positive reaction from an HIV test)
- Ka-onde-onde – “Thing that makes you thinner and thinner” (HIV)
Bemba, spoken mainly in the north and Lusaka
- Bamalwele ya akashishi – “Those that suffer from the germ” (HIV-positive people)
- Kaleza – “Razor blade” (Refers to a person being thin as a result of AIDS-related weight loss
Zimbabwe
Shona
- Ari pachirongwa – “He/she is on a (treatment) programme”
- Akarohwa nematsoti – “He/she has been beaten by thieves”
- Mukondas – Abbreviation of “mukondombera” (epidemic)
- Ari kumwa mangai – “He/she is drinking mangai” (mangai is boiled corn seedlings, which represent antiretroviral (ARV) drugs)
- Akabatwa – “He/she was caught” (received a positive diagnosis)
- Zvirwere zvemazuvano – “The current diseases” (the HIV epidemic)
- Akatsika banana – “He/she has stepped on a banana and slipped” (someone who has tested positive and therefore will “fall” or die as a result)
- Shuramatongo – “A bad omen for relatives”
English
- Red card – Like a football player being sent off, life is over
- Go slow – Taken to mean that he/she is now progressing slowly towards death
- TB2 – Refers to high rates of HIV and TB co-infection (used to denote AIDS)
- RVR - Slang for ARVs, adapted from Mitsubishi’s RVR sports utility vehicle
- John the Baptist – When someone has TB, he/she is said to have been baptised by “John the Baptist”, who has come to announce the coming of HIV
- FTT – “Failure to thrive” (adapted from the medical phrase, now used to describe HIV-positive children)
- Boarding pass – Implies that HIV is a boarding pass to death
- Departure lounge – An HIV-infected person is in the departure lounge awaiting death
I am reading Fatal Advice, by Cindy Patton who writes on how safe sex education went wrong by making HIV/AIDS in the U.S a ‘gay disease’. It is a telling account of this naming process, which your post reminded me of.
What’s been interesting for me in the last 8 or so years is how HIV/AIDS has become, once again, a gay disease, even as its demographics change. There’s a generational issue, of course, which some of the African examples make clear. It’s striking, for instance, how visible HIV/AIDS is, wasting bodies and the like, images deemed obscene in the U.S., and thus absent from our public discourse.
It’s somewhat of a terrible metaphor that the more we know about HIV/AIDS and its effects, the less we seem able to deal with it.