So I am living in a youth hostel called Cape Town Backpackers. Tonight is my last night here.
Ok I need to tell this story to give a little glimpse of life around the hostel. Living in a hostel is kinda like living in a college dorm room with a bunch more people in closer quarters, and then add a full bar on the hall. It is truly a combustable setting.
Last night (Friday night) I got back from Khayelitsha, got dinner, journaled and read for a while, and went to bed around 11. Between 10:30 pm and 2:30 pm is the quietest time of the night around here as everyone is finished with their drinking in the hostel and are out on the town, so at 11 pm there last night there was no one in the room and I fell asleep really quickly.
The tough part of the night was when the crew stumbled back in. My 5 roomates didn't make it back until around 4:30 am. I was more than a little frustrated at them for rousting me, but I rolled back over and tried to get back to sleep. Just as I was dozing back off I heard a huge crash and the sound of bare skin slapping the polished brick floor. I looked down to see one of the two Argentinans rolling around on the floor having fallen out of his top bunk bed. He hit really hard.
Call me a bad guy but I deeply enjoyed laughing at this guy for a couple of minutes as he rolled around on the floor in pain. The Argentinans have kinda been on my bad side because since they first got here they periodically douse the entire room with AXE spray deoderant (aweful), and after all, he did wake me up from a great sleep. I did eventually check to make sure he was ok. He didn't really acknowledge me but seemed to shake off the tumble, and after lying on the floor for a good little while, he managed to summon the courage to attempt the climb back up to his top bunk, more succesfully on the second try.
It is those little moments that stick with you ya know.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Training of Coaches Wrap Up
Today was the last day of coaches training at the Football for Hope Center in Khayelitsha. It really turned out to be a great experience as we were confronted with so many tough issues surrounding HIV and attempting to prevent it in a place like this. I have so many thoughts from the week.
The thought or summation or idea that keeps coming back to me this week is the way in which AIDS feeds off so many inequalities and injustices. Gender inequality is the most apparent. That is the incredible degree to which girls are less educated, 100% financially dependent, completely socially subservient, and devoid of voice presents quite a difficult challenge to prevention.
Poverty presents a unique challenge. You see HIV/AIDS is not urgent. It takes years to really set in, even without treatment. Hunger is urgent. Shelter is now. Safety is now. For a woman, having a man to provide for her 7 children in paramount. AIDS is the last thing on so many of these people's minds. If people don't have anything to live for why would they care about HIV?
Racial inequality destroys prevention efforts. It does so by destroying leadership. South Africa existed for such an incredibly long time under Apartheid, recial inequality that makes segregation seem lame. African people down here grew up with no vote, no voice, no social mobility. No one understands that they can make a difference. The African community is devoid of initiative, motivation, hope, dreams, confidence, etc. There is no leadership, not in townships like Khayelitsha. So when an organization like GRS goes to get people from the community to train them and pay them to implement and cook-book, ready-made AIDS prevention curriculum, they can't find anyone, not many. The last two days the trainees have been doing "teach-backs" where they basically practice presenting a lesson to their peers for evaluation and training purposes. Quite honestly these two days have been pretty discouraging because although it seems they have received excellent training, very few (maybe 5 out of 20) seem to have been able to succesfully present the curriculum. I am not talking about being great, dynamic teachers, I am merely talking about tying together ideas in a coherent way to deliver a basic message about HIV/AIDS. These trainees are awesome. They are great people. Truly. They just have incredibly low confidence, self-esteem, and they one by one got up to practice talking in front of a group struggled. It was tough to watch.
I don't want to sound too tough on these guys. I think they will get there and GRS continues to work with them and develop them. They will go with experienced coaches for a while to sort of learn the methods in more of an apprenticeship fashion. But the repercussions of inequality and repression are so apparent.
While all that inequality is depressing in a lot of ways, and the challenges facing AIDS continue to seem overbearing and impossible. However, I really noticed something today that was exciting. Although this AIDS prevention stuff my have no hope whatsoever, it may decades before the epedemic is in any way manageable, the problem is a wonderful excuse to deal with some of these deeper issues. Like GRS may not succeed in making this group into effective implementors of their prevention curriculum, but every day this week those people heard over and over again that they were valuable, that they matter, that they can change people's behavior, that they can influence a child's life. They were told and shown that what women say has equal weight to what men say. They were given a cause to increasingly be knowledgable about and have tools to contribute to the battle. They were given 2 meals and 10-20 Rand a day (about $1.50). Way more than the roughly 80% unemployed in Khayelitsha. And next week they will be placed in schools and communities where they will have the ability to present that same sort of justice to 40-80 kids a day. Pretty cool. So what if we can't beat AIDS. Maybe AIDS is exactly what Khayelitsha needs (obviously there would be a lot of people who disagree with that last statement). It is worth thinking about.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Culture...What is the answer???
3rd day in Khayelitsha sitting in on the training of coaches to do AIDS prevention education.
It was a really tough day in a lot of ways, but it was also an incredible day in terms of what we experienced first hand. Today we were apart of a couple of group discussions (the group of "coaches" consists of 20 young adults from poor, urban backgrounds). In these discussions the topic of sexual practices and condom use were discussed with incredible frankness and honesty. It was certainly the most realistic and open look at the culture in South Africa and the cultural difficulties that underly the AIDS epedemic here. We weren't reading about this stuff from a book or hearing some white, American academic talk about. We were seeing it in real life. We were watching people talk about this stuff and revealing their own personal history and experience. In many ways it was really exciting to be there for these conversations. However the truth that these discussion revealed was deeply disheartening.
The honesty about the prevalence of people having multiple sexual partners was unbelievable. These people mostly come from the Xhsoa ("click"osa) culture which for centuries has practiced polygamy. The president of the country before the current president had multiple wives. Under that culture it is completely common for a man to have multiple (as many as possible) sexual partners, whether married to them or not. That is how men think and that is what even the women expect.
We had a conversation with the head instructors during one of the break and they said that the idea that kids will abstain from sex and wait for a mutually faithful partner/marriage is an absolute "pipe-dream" and isn't a legitimate education stance for an prevention organization that wants to actually make an impact in South Africa. Wow!
On top of that, there was incredible honesty about the infrequency of the use of protection. In the heat of the moment, these people admitted to rarely using protection. For an hour the group went back and forth about why and gave many different reasons. They were telling personal stories and admitting to the frequency of unprottected intercours. Another Wow!
So how do you do prevention?? The two halmarks of prevention (abstainance and protection) seem to be absolutely useless here, if not useless they face a long, uphill road until they actally have an impact on AIDS prevalence and incidence.
We have our own thougths but very few answers.
AIDS is a beast. It is incredible how it strikes at the heart and thrives on these deeply entrenched cultural values. We have mentioned it before but it is so much more than a medical disease. It is a social disease, it is a cultural disease. How do we defeat that?
The typical Amerian solution, that is for the most part true about how our nation is handling this problem in South Africa, is to sit from a distance and throw our money this way and hope for the best and pat ourselves on the back for our noble "altruism," but, as was said today by one of the South Africans, the people of the world who are trying to help need to come and actually see what is happening in South Africa and understand all sides to the HIV/AIDS epidemic problem. More is needed than just a supply of ARV's. These people need role models, and cultural alternatives. How do you change a social norm by throwing money at a culture? It won't happen. There is something deeper at work here than a simple medical disease? We are at a loss for how the epidemic can be stopped with the existing social norms. Something has to change in the minds and culture of this people. How to bring this change about seems beyond anyone at this point in time, but there are multitudes of people here who care and are trying.
Despite all this negativity, we had a great day and learned a ton. We really felt included by the group and we participated in all the activities of the day, and the group listened to our input on the different discussion that took place. We also go to just sit and listen to some really powerful, open discussions that really brought the roots of this HIV epidemic to light.
It was a really tough day in a lot of ways, but it was also an incredible day in terms of what we experienced first hand. Today we were apart of a couple of group discussions (the group of "coaches" consists of 20 young adults from poor, urban backgrounds). In these discussions the topic of sexual practices and condom use were discussed with incredible frankness and honesty. It was certainly the most realistic and open look at the culture in South Africa and the cultural difficulties that underly the AIDS epedemic here. We weren't reading about this stuff from a book or hearing some white, American academic talk about. We were seeing it in real life. We were watching people talk about this stuff and revealing their own personal history and experience. In many ways it was really exciting to be there for these conversations. However the truth that these discussion revealed was deeply disheartening.
The honesty about the prevalence of people having multiple sexual partners was unbelievable. These people mostly come from the Xhsoa ("click"osa) culture which for centuries has practiced polygamy. The president of the country before the current president had multiple wives. Under that culture it is completely common for a man to have multiple (as many as possible) sexual partners, whether married to them or not. That is how men think and that is what even the women expect.
We had a conversation with the head instructors during one of the break and they said that the idea that kids will abstain from sex and wait for a mutually faithful partner/marriage is an absolute "pipe-dream" and isn't a legitimate education stance for an prevention organization that wants to actually make an impact in South Africa. Wow!
On top of that, there was incredible honesty about the infrequency of the use of protection. In the heat of the moment, these people admitted to rarely using protection. For an hour the group went back and forth about why and gave many different reasons. They were telling personal stories and admitting to the frequency of unprottected intercours. Another Wow!
So how do you do prevention?? The two halmarks of prevention (abstainance and protection) seem to be absolutely useless here, if not useless they face a long, uphill road until they actally have an impact on AIDS prevalence and incidence.
We have our own thougths but very few answers.
AIDS is a beast. It is incredible how it strikes at the heart and thrives on these deeply entrenched cultural values. We have mentioned it before but it is so much more than a medical disease. It is a social disease, it is a cultural disease. How do we defeat that?
The typical Amerian solution, that is for the most part true about how our nation is handling this problem in South Africa, is to sit from a distance and throw our money this way and hope for the best and pat ourselves on the back for our noble "altruism," but, as was said today by one of the South Africans, the people of the world who are trying to help need to come and actually see what is happening in South Africa and understand all sides to the HIV/AIDS epidemic problem. More is needed than just a supply of ARV's. These people need role models, and cultural alternatives. How do you change a social norm by throwing money at a culture? It won't happen. There is something deeper at work here than a simple medical disease? We are at a loss for how the epidemic can be stopped with the existing social norms. Something has to change in the minds and culture of this people. How to bring this change about seems beyond anyone at this point in time, but there are multitudes of people here who care and are trying.
Despite all this negativity, we had a great day and learned a ton. We really felt included by the group and we participated in all the activities of the day, and the group listened to our input on the different discussion that took place. We also go to just sit and listen to some really powerful, open discussions that really brought the roots of this HIV epidemic to light.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Update and Thoughts
Last weekend was tourist weekend: Table Mountain, Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope on Sunday. Neat stuff.
This week we are back at GrassRoots Soccer in Khayelitsha. They are training a group of about 20 young adults to present/teach/use their curriculum for HIV/AIDS education and prevention. Interesting in a lot of ways. They do an incredible job of modeling in the training sessions how they want their trainees to teach the kids. Without even knowing almost, the trainees are being taught with the same methods that that are going to use to teach the high school kids (not sure if that makes sense). But you can see how effective a method that is at training these people who have never been teachers to teach in a week. The training works not by telling these guys how they are supposed to teach but by showing them. After they get through this week of training they will have spent 9-5 in the kind of classroom environment that they are supposed to create when they go to schools and communities. Interesting to see in action.
One thing that is discouraging to me however is that the only tool AIDS prevention seems to have is condoms. That is all the education curriculum is based on getting awareness out there about what HIV/AIDS is and how it is spread and then getting people to use condoms. Some of these classes are taught to 12 year olds and they are going to hear the message: "you are probably going to have multiple partners so make sure you always use condoms." It is like culture is too tough of a beast to tame so all we can do is tell them to use condoms. What about someone saying you can sacrifice your little petty desires short term and wait until you find someone you are willing to serve unselfishly for your entire life. And when you do that it is awesome and difficult yes, but so worth it and emotionally fulfilling etc. etc oh and by the way you won't get AIDS either. But culture is too tough of a beast so we give up, give up on 12-year-olds. Seems sad to me. I think they can be different. Maybe I'm naive.
Sorry if that was a little more than you bargained for.
Off to more prevention education sessions and making posters and flip charts. We are getting really artsy.
This week we are back at GrassRoots Soccer in Khayelitsha. They are training a group of about 20 young adults to present/teach/use their curriculum for HIV/AIDS education and prevention. Interesting in a lot of ways. They do an incredible job of modeling in the training sessions how they want their trainees to teach the kids. Without even knowing almost, the trainees are being taught with the same methods that that are going to use to teach the high school kids (not sure if that makes sense). But you can see how effective a method that is at training these people who have never been teachers to teach in a week. The training works not by telling these guys how they are supposed to teach but by showing them. After they get through this week of training they will have spent 9-5 in the kind of classroom environment that they are supposed to create when they go to schools and communities. Interesting to see in action.One thing that is discouraging to me however is that the only tool AIDS prevention seems to have is condoms. That is all the education curriculum is based on getting awareness out there about what HIV/AIDS is and how it is spread and then getting people to use condoms. Some of these classes are taught to 12 year olds and they are going to hear the message: "you are probably going to have multiple partners so make sure you always use condoms." It is like culture is too tough of a beast to tame so all we can do is tell them to use condoms. What about someone saying you can sacrifice your little petty desires short term and wait until you find someone you are willing to serve unselfishly for your entire life. And when you do that it is awesome and difficult yes, but so worth it and emotionally fulfilling etc. etc oh and by the way you won't get AIDS either. But culture is too tough of a beast so we give up, give up on 12-year-olds. Seems sad to me. I think they can be different. Maybe I'm naive.
Sorry if that was a little more than you bargained for.
Off to more prevention education sessions and making posters and flip charts. We are getting really artsy.
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