Politics of Blame: Clashing Moralities and the AIDS Epidemic in Nso’ (North-West Province, Cameroon).

In Nso’ different politics of cultural construction of the AIDS epidemic are centred around generational differences and find their discursive articulation in the witchcraft idiom. On the one hand palatine elites accuse the youth of practicing illicit forms of sexuality such as incest and adultery credited with the power of polluting the whole social body. Because of their identification with western modernity the youth are blamed of turning away from the traditional laws of the land (nser se nsay). On the other hand the youth see waame (the Lamnso' term for AIDS) as the outcome of a form of witchcraft practised by those in power, moving away from the issue of the contamination of the blood to go deeper into the question of the corruption of power. Suffering emerges as a form of cultural practice, as an embodied commentary on past and present social relations and political processes. By interpreting the symptoms of waame as the outcome of the state witchcraft the youth bring into life the historical memory of the slave trade as well as the deep implication of the local reality with national and international policies that mould the HIV risk in Nso’.