"How does the minister feel about dry sex?" Good grief. What sort of question is that? A gulp and a bit of evasiveness could be forgiven even if it were asked in an off-the-record interview by a brash, foot-in-door journalist in some western city. But this is not London or New York or Hamburg. It is Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, a small country where matters sexual are not traditionally regarded as suitable topics for open discussion at formal dinners such as this, and the question is being put by a highly respectable local doctor. What's going on? A war, is the answer, in which the dinner forms a small propaganda offensive. It is an occasion to tell some visiting foreigners about Botswana's efforts to overcome AIDS and, if that means talking about dry sex over the dessert, so be it. Well then, since the health minister has been asked for her views on that subject, what exactly does she think about it? She's against it. No equivocating, no prevaricating from Joy Phumaphi: she condemns the practice―whereby some women insert objects such as herbs or toothpaste into their vaginas in order to prevent lubrication. Some southern African men like their sex this way; slack vaginas feel tighter. They also bleed more easily, allowing the human im- munodeficiency virus (HIV) to penetrate the tissue.
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