New Hanover High grad mapping spread of AIDS in Malawi

Cameron Taylor spent part of her summer mapping brothels in Malawi. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill junior was using mapping techniques to document how AIDS spreads among populations.

Malawi is a landlocked country in southern Africa. It’s slightly smaller than Pennsylvania, according to the CIA’s online World Factbook.

It is hard-hit by AIDS. The World Factbook cited a 2003 estimate that 14.2 percent of adults were infected with HIV/AIDS.

Taylor was staying next to an HIV clinic. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. Every morning she saw people lined up for medications.

She’s a geography major. I met with her at her parents’ home in Scotts Hill while she was home on break.

Why geography?

“I’ve always liked maps, and I always liked science,” she said.

“When I say I’m a geography major, people always ask, ‘What’s the capital of so-and-so?’ ” she said. “I’m like, ‘Aargh!’ ”

Geographers often work with people in other disciplines such as economy or public health.

UNC has a strong presence in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital city. It operates a medical research facility and medical school in Lilongwe.

Taylor, a graduate of New Hanover High School, was part of a team of three that also included a graduate student and a geography professor.

“People were amazed at what we produced,” she said.

Social factors affect disease patterns. HIV is more prevalent in poor areas than in wealthier ones. “If you know how it spreads, hopefully you can contain it,” she said.

AIDS doesn’t just spread by sexual contact, she said. Many Malawian children get it from mother’s milk. But there’s little alternative to breast-feeding in such a poor country.

The team worked to train Malawian field workers how to use hand-held global positioning devices.

Early on, they were mapping brothels, mostly bars with beds in the back. Sex workers are likely to contract HIV and then to spread it.

When her van of workers wielding handheld devices pulled outside such a bar, they were often met by suspicion. She was amazed by how many drunk men she saw in the middle of the day.

Many of the prostitutes were widows in their 40s. She thought their husbands had died of AIDS, leaving them with no other way to get along.

Tobacco is a big crop in Malawi. The prostitutes follow tobacco trucks, servicing young drivers far from home. Thus HIV is spread up and down highways.

The demographics of Lilongwe were far different than Wilmington’s.

“We never really saw old people, but there were lots of kids,” she said.

The children were delighted to see white people, particularly a blond-haired, blue-eyed student. They would follow her party around, shouting, “azungo!” which means white person in the native language of Chichewa.

It’s fun being adored.

“I really missed that when I came back. I think people should bow at my feet,” Taylor joked.

The brothel project lasted a couple of weeks. Then Taylor began to work on mapping the “catchment area” for a clinic that treated kids under 5 years old with malaria.

She went to a health clinic in an outer district of Lilongwe and asked to see the medical records, to map out where the patients lived. She kind of expected shelves with file folders. Instead, she was shown a roach-infested cabinet stuffed with composition notebooks.

She asked for a chair and they brought her a potty. She washed it with antiseptic hand soap, put the lid down and went to work.

The records room was next to the maternity ward. Women assumed she was a doctor and pelted her with questions.

“I faint at the sight of blood,” she told me. “I said, ‘Please don’t show me anything.’ ”

She spent a week sitting on that potty chair, entering data into her laptop. It turned out women walk for miles to get to the clinic.

It’s hard mapping Lilongwe’s outlying areas. Most streets have no names. Slum neighborhoods miles apart share the same name.

A few weeks later she was mapping traffic accidents and injuries. Her team must have been getting a bit silly: They came up with the term “goat-induced panic attacks” to describe accidents where goats ran out in front of cars.

She had time to travel around the country. She went snorkling in Lake Nyasa, played with kids who’d never seen a Frisbee, sampled a foul, thick local beer that came in a milk carton, and mingled with elephants and zebras at wildlife preserves.

She loved being around children. She hopes when she returns next summer she can spend some time teaching classes.

In one clothing market, she found a Carolina Tar Heels cap.

When she tried to impress upon the vendor what an amazing coincidence that was, his response was simple: “Well, buy it!”

Si Cantwell covers the people and places that make Southeastern North Carolina unique.