Friday, January 20, 2006

Camisihnas


My friend Rachel, who worked here for four years in the mid 90s, is responsible for coining the name of the most popular condom here in Mozambique: jeito. It's one of those untranslatable words that means something akin to skill or talent or knack. They're widely available in urban areas, but still rarely used. I've seen a lot of kids fashioning balloons from them and they're often inflated and batted around the crowd at concerts, but statistics on national condom use show that it's still sporadic at best, even in the cities. Part of the problem is that the initial Jeito marketing campaign coincided with the dawn of awareness of the AIDS epidemic in the public consciousness and the descent of a proliferation of NGOs to address it. Tenacious rumors sprouted that, at worst, Jeito condoms acutally cause HIV or, at best, the Western NGOs are profiting so much from the sale of condoms that they don't really want the epidemic to end. Jeito's initial advertising seemed to strongly link condoms with promiscutiy and probably didn't help matters any, especially for women wanting to broach the subject to their partners. The marketers are a little more sophisticated these days, but there's still little discussion of the public uneasiness with condoms or the real reasons why people are so reluctant to use them.

Condom ad heard on the car radio driving through Maputo (Translated from the Portuguese):
This program is brought to you by Kama Sutra condoms, when you need a camisinha, (little shirt, Portuguese slang) think of Kama Sutra. Now in strawberry, mango, vanilla, cheese, mint, and chocolate flavors. And there’s Long Life Kama Sutra, yes, that’s right, believe it, go the distance on the very longest voyages. Kids, be safe, use Kama Sutra condoms. They’ll prevent pregnancy and some of the nastier illnesses that can ruin your life.

Condom slogan hanging in HAI offices:
Better to come a little later in this life than come early to the next.

Indian poster of all the positions of the Kama Sutra with slogan:
Many positions with one is better than one position with many.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

wendy, necesito saber de ti...

9:56 AM  
Blogger Zizou From Djerba said...

Wow ! Wendy ! Im impressed !
From now on you are Admin on the IHP blog !

8:09 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Kamasutra Condoms are available in various varieties such as dotted, platinum longlast,intensity,wet n wild etc..

1:22 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

This is quite interesting. I think you would find this interesting too: Indian condom brands

8:18 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Quite interesting. I think you would find this interesting too: indian condom brands

1:36 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Hmmm really nice. Hey why don;t you check this as well - dotted condoms

2:42 PM  

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