Third Times the Charm!

I switched out of my placement at Kiwodea. There was simply not enough for us to do there, certainly not enough for two people to do five days a week. We weren't doing much when our interpreter wasn't there and weren't able to help in any concrete way. I am here to give what I can and I wasn't able to do so in that placement. Both Brittany and I have swapped to different groups. It was a bummer to give up on another women's group, but I wanted to be the most productive that I could given my time restraints and I wasn't able to do so at that placement.

So today I started working at Jipe Moyo with two other volunteers, Holly and Katie, both from Ill. While I was bummed that I spent two weeks at other places, I learned some valuable lessons along the way. Jipe Moyo is another women's group, this time consisting of all women who are HIV positive. They have a wood cutting and vegetable business and weekly meetings that are regularly attended. It was good because I got to talk with the volunteers before I chose this placement.

I will be teaching local kids who did not pass the english exam for secondary school. Because they are not proficient enough in English, they will not be able to go to secondary school which severly restricts their ability to achieve. There are about 15 kids that are ages 14-17, 3 boys and 12 girls. It is especially important for the young girls to be given a chance for a good education. We will be teaching them remedial english to catch them up so that they can take the exams again. I am more excited about this age group than the small kids because they have longer attention spans, want to be there, and there isn't a teacher with a stick whacking them as I teach. Additionally, we will be doing house visits two times a week and a weekly support group for the women.

Today was a support group day and this meant our first venture into sex ed. Luckily, we have a local volunteer Armani who is wonderful to translate for us. We purchased two condoms and a banana (ndizi) and a cucumber (tango) from the local market to use as tools. There was eight women present, all of them HIV positive, and only one had ever used a condom before. We spent about an hour and a half going over the proper way of putting it on and answering many questions about condom use, along with general sex ed questions. We learned a lot about the role of sex in the culture here and were able to answer some questions about the spread of disease as well as sex in America. You can ask me later for specific details about the African sexual life if you like... It was amazing to be able to directly effect these women and incredible to me that they had not yet learned about condom use. What knowledge they did have was from the Roman Catholic church, which actively tries to discourage use. There was also an obvious bias against condoms based on rumors, which we quickly debunked. Another hurdle we face teaching sex ed to women is that often women do not have a say in the type, amount, or with whom they have sex. Sexual relations outside a marraige is common, especially because the men generally work away from the home.

It was my most productive day so far and it feels great!