We met Charles 2 weeks ago. He runs a locally driven project (community project) addressing the social issues that increase the risk of HIV/AIDS as well as the social issues created by the disease. His main activity is to promote HIV/AIDS prevention and behavior change amongst the youth and adults. Education is the key. He heard that I was a teacher and asked me to do a lecture… I don’t feel comfortable at teaching a subject I don’t know well but I can sense how important it is for him to have azungus involved in his project.
It’s 9.30am when Johanna and I enter the classroom. Around 30 young people (14 to 20 yrs old) are listening at Charles. The topic is on the chalkboard: Sexual transmitted infections (STIs). We sit at the back. I observe. A few notebooks and even fewer pens passing from a hand to another; an attentive audience; 3 girls only… The objective of the lesson is to demonstrate that the presence of STIs greatly enhances the risk of HIV infection. Charles asks about the symptoms of these infections... Some of the answers are quite scary and explain why ill people often suffer of stigma and discrimination…
Recess. Charles doesn’t believe in charity only and would like these young people to be self-sufficient… He thinks that dancing and playing music could be a good way to make money. They prepared a show for us...There is a boy who put his own drums together. It is so clevery done. The main body is a washing machine drum and he uses a ear of corn to hit it. I love it!!
It's my turn. I decided not to teach but to debate on the topic. I prepared a few questions... Johanna helps me. My approach is informal and open. I want to challenge the participants to overcome their own misgivings and miconceptions... It's difficult to have them talk... I ask if they use condoms. "YES!" I'm not convinced. I play the "Madagascan card" to make them more confortable... I say that in my country, men don't use condoms because "it's not cool"... The reaction is immediate: the "cool ones" reveal their true colors. Using a condom is like "keeping the paper on the sweet". Another one does not see the necessity of using them since they are not 100% safe. A third one explains that contracting HIV is god's will. I do think that faith in God is a real issue in this country but it's another topic.Anyway we debate for 1 hour... I realise that most of these guys knows the topic as well as I do. Ways to contract HIV; means to avoid it etc. As a matter of fact, information on the HIV/AIDS pandemic is widely available. So why is such little change in people's behavior? The problem is complex. The subjects of HIV and sex are still taboo in many African cultures. How do you do it when you can't talk about the thing you're trying to inform about? People are reluctant to admit that they have been infected. In Malawi, if you look at death certificates of people who obviously died of aids, you see causes ranging from a stomach ache to a "long illness". The African culture is also slow to help fight the epidemic because of the strentgh of the traditional practices (see next note). Practices that result in more women being infected - infection rates amongst teenage girls are four times higher than boys.
