My Peace Corps Namibia training group included both the Community Economic Development volunteers of whom I am one and a clutch of Community Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention volunteers. While we had separate technical training sessions, we overheard a lot of each others' material, and of course talked about what we were learning, planning, hoping. We also all had to compete in some condom-putting-on role-play exercise/game for which the CHHAP vols had a huge advantage. They spent, it sometimes seemed, at least a little bit of time every day unfurling condoms onto a huge selection of wooden phalli. They also learned about things like nutrition, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS treatment, alcoholism and sexual mores and oh so much more.
 |
| Squish the package - that was a new one for me. |
Childhood nutrition, or lack thereof, is a terrible problem in many communities here (less so in my town, where unemployment is very high but the jobs that are available are good). A lot of kids eat a diet that's, maybe, 80% simple carbs -- bread, white potatoes, white macaroni, white rice, maybe an occasional fatcake, but mostly the ubiquitous pap, a white-cornmeal polenta, or the darker mahangu, a porridge made from millet. If the family has protein available, probably goat, sheep or chicken, the adults get dibs and the kids get scraps. If they're lucky. Vegetables are an occasional bit of spinach, onion or carrot, and fruit is rare. Especially in early childhood -- from the time the baby's diet of breast milk starts getting supplemented with other food, until two or three -- this can be terribly dangerous. Without protein and the vitamins and minerals that fruit and veg provide, nothing grows to full strength: not the lungs, the heart, the brain, the bones or muscles. And they can never catch up. Breaks my heart.
 |
| Good childhood health turns out smart, high-energy teens like these. |
So, when I was building the lesson plan for my English improvement trainings, thinking that topics like food and medicine are usual for language learning, I knew I could fold some 'life skills' lessons into the mix. And, since HIV and AIDS are huge problems here, with more than one in ten adults living with HIV or AIDS (16% according to the UN, and much higher in some regions, and many babies being infected by their HIV-positive mothers at birth), I decided to include a session on HIV and AIDS prevention and care. So I got in touch with A., a nearby CHHAP volunteer, and invited her to town. She happily agreed, and decided it would be good for me to spend a few hours distributing condoms at local shebeens (bars), and how could a person disagree with that?
When two or more PC vols get together for a project, we call that a 'collaboration.' We have to get approval from our PC bosses, so A., the expert, wrote up a proposal and submitted it to her boss, who loved the idea and forwarded it to my boss, who also approved. I SMS'd our local Health Ministry nurse to run the condom-distribution idea by her, and A. tried to phone, and neither of us managed to reach her, but we figured that would be okay. Then A. hiked the bumpy roads to my town, carrying a file with pages printed with each of, I believe, 17 steps to put on a condom. I only knew six.
 |
| Gosh-darn 'Africa time' |
A. actually approved of my six steps, but she likes to go into detail. She arrived on a Wednesday, and we sat in my office and discussed our approach. Since my lessons usually began with some vocabulary and moved on to using the words and concepts in conversation - speaking and listening - we decided to start with the words that make up the initialism HIV and the acronym AIDS. That was my job. Wednesday night I fed A. mushroom gnocci with a brandied mushroom sauce and whole-wheat ciabatta, and gave her responsibility for the salad, which was delicious.
 |
| Femidom demo |
On Thursday, we walked down to the local clinic, introduced ourselves in person to various nurses, which was much more successful than our telephonic attempts, and walked back with a heavy case of male condoms and a couple boxes of female condoms. We had our afternoon class with lots of teenage girls and an evening class with all adults, mostly women. I led off, writing "HIV" and "AIDS" down the left side of the flip chart, and asking if people knew what the letters stood for. They knew many, and got pretty close on the others. I wrote out "human"; everyone knew what that meant. Then "immunodeficiency." "'Immune' means you are protected against something," I explained, invoking the recent measles vaccination campaign that had come through town a week or two earlier. "'Deficient' means not having enough." (Then I threw in 'sufficient', 'abundance' and 'excess'. It's an English class, not a clinic.) "So 'immunodeficiency' means you don't have enough protection against the diseases that are part of AIDS. 'Virus' means it's contagious - you can catch it from another person, like tuberculosis or flu. Headaches and cancer are not contagious, or infectious -- they don't spread from person to person." Same thing with AIDS, ending with the S for 'syndrome', "which means AIDS isn't really a single disease, but a collection of illnesses that can infect a person with low immunity."
I also introduced the word 'stigma,' which A. had identified as the #1 problem for people living with HIV and AIDS, and we talked about what we should do for people who are sick. Some of our learners were admirably eloquent on the need to treat sick people with compassion and support.
 |
| Festus holds the pen-penis. |
A. spread out, across the floor, her 17 pages of condom-acquisition steps, and we all gathered around to discuss each one and throw out questions as they occurred. She used a bunch of pens rubber-banded together to mimic an erect penis, and rolled an unexpired, airy and well-lubed condom over them. Then she used her fingers as a mock vagina and demo'd the female condom, or femidom, which generated great interest and many questions. A. had answers for everything. People demonstrated no squeamishness or shyness about the topic, asking questions and sharing ideas as they had with topics like weather and budgeting. It was great.
That night, I fed A. pap and chakalaka for dinner! You like to mix it up.
 |
| Friday morning grocery shopping |
 |
| I've got a beet, so I could make borscht in honor of A's Ukrainian heritage. |
And the next day, we gathered up our clinic-provided condoms and headed out to the bars. (As part of its effort to combat HIV and AIDS, the Namibian government provides free condoms to all, through the Ministry of Health. They're supposed to be available in bars, but MoH employees rarely have time to do the distribution, and shebeen managers aren't able to or interested in going to the clinic to collect a few boxes, so A. winds up doing this job a lot in her town.) We left a box or two - or three - at each of ten or twelve shebeens and shops, and a handful or two of femidoms, also. A. wrote up a thorough report for me to deliver to the clinic, and showed admirable aplomb in shaking off the advances of bar patrons who wanted her sunglasses, her phone number, her company for the evening, or a trip to America. I just kind of tagged along, smiling genially. For dinner that night, we had four of my friends over for chicken and lots of veg, from Dreamland Garden, in a Senegalese-style peanut sauce, with *brown* rice. I love a party.
 |
| Genuine interest in HIV prevention, plus a Friday-afternoon shebeen-face. |
This is the kind of stuff that makes the PC service seem really worthwhile. I am so grateful that they trained us with the CHHAP people, and encourage us to get together with these kinds of exercises, and that A. is willing to slog her way over here to help us out. She does claim she loves to visit my town, which is cleaner, quieter and friendlier than hers. When we were lugging our condoms back to the office, two boys stopped to ask if they could help us. A. practically dropped her side of the box in amazement. Where she lives, children constantly demand money from her, or food, and never offer help. Sometimes I hear other vols saying, "In Namibia, people..." and I think about the contrasts between A's town, my town, the tiny villages of my northern colleagues, and the slums and middle-class neighborhoods of Swakopmund.
 |
| Party! |
 |
| Friday afternoon on-our-way-to-the-shebeen faces. |
No comments:
Post a Comment