Month of Youth Against AIDS (MYAA) is wrapping up. The second week of March, we hosted a HIV/AIDS Youth Forum in Gumare. We had 31 students show up. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to get students to come on a weekend. The teachers attribute it to boredom, although I think part of it has to do with the fact that the teachers tell them they have to come. 2 other PCVs and 2 counselors from the Gumare Counseling Center help facilitate the workshop.We used interactive, learning activities and games to teach the students about HIV myths versus facts, risky behaviors that transmit HIV, how HIV affects the immune system, and how HIV spreads through sexual networks. The students also learned about topics like STIs, the ABCs of HIV prevention, healthy living, behavior change, gender-based violence, decision-making and communication skills. Discussion was especially animated around topics such as Love, Sex, and Dating and Gender. We also did condom demonstrations; unfortunately, there is nowhere for youth to access condoms, even though 33% of 15-29 year olds are HIV positive and 33% of all pregnancies in our district are teenage pregnancies. Some of the issues that the students brought up as problems in schools were teachers who have sex with students and young girls having sex with men in the village for “presents”. At the end of the forum, the students discussed how HIV/AIDS affects their community and strategies they can use to help work against HIV/AIDS in their school and in Gumare.
Last weekend, Richard, the other PCV in Gumare, and I helped the GLOW/PACT club at the primary school do two mural projects to commemorate Month of Youth Against AIDS. One of the murals carried this year’s MYAA message One Me, One Partner, One Life (which is aimed towards reducing multiple, concurrent sexual partnerships that are fueling the HIV epidemic here) and the other one was a AIDS ribbon with We Want Life written in Setswana. The kids were very proud of the murals when they were done. Next week, they are going to do a drama and read a poem to the school to teach the other students about HIV/AIDS.
Things in the office have really picked up for me. I am usually busy during the morning/afternoon. We have been working on reports, following up on the Child Welfare Networking Forum by creating a directory for our area, etc. There will also be an Ark for Children Therapy Camp for orphans, sponsored by our office, next month. I’ve also been trying to get funds to hold a GLOW regional camp in our district in August. I am also helping the Health Education Officer plan an Employee Wellness Fair in May. We have already assembled a committee to help us arrange activities. Richard has been busy helping his office coordinate all the MYAA activities going on this month, as well as prepare for the upcoming quarterly TAC (Technical Advisory Committee for the DMSAC) and the District Multisectoral AIDS Committee. He is also working to raise funds to renovate the village’s community center so people have a social outlet, other than bars, and kids can relieve some of their boredom.
I have been going to the schools in the late afternoons, a few times a week, to work with the PACT/GLOW clubs at the primary school and the junior secondary school. I am also starting to mentor seven Form 3 (equiv to 9th, 10th grade) students from the Junior Secondary School. Richard is also mentoring four Form 3 students. Hopefully in May, I will be able to get a Students Against Malaria group going once the students are trained by a teacher who will come from Gaborone.
The weather is starting to get a lot cooler now since it is almost winter. It goes down to the low 60s at night, which is nice because I no longer start sweating the minute I get out of the shower. It makes sleeping a lot more pleasant. We are still fighting to get a refund for our plane tickets to Madagascar, but it doesn’t look promising. I think we are planning to go to Namibia next month instead. We finally bought our plane tickets to visit home in September. We will arrive in NYC on September 1 and leave September 14th. We are really looking forward to seeing our family and friends, as well as eating at all our favorite restaurantsJ
For those who are keeping tabs, we are up to 3 dogs and a cat. The third dogs we dubbed Not Our Dog even though he is looking mighty comfortable in our front yard these days. Unfortunately, all three dogs (two have been in our yard since we moved in) are dogs people left behind when they moved. Since they are very loyal to us, we don’t have the heart to eject them from our yard; however, we don’t claim ownership. I guess it doesn’t help that we go around collecting scraps for them whenever we can (they refuse dog food).
