I pretty much sat on my ass all day and read. I read about a fictional woman who struggles through her own demons of past and future to realize how fragile and fleeting life is, only in the end to settle down. Is this always the happy ending? I felt myself wishing for the nicely encapsulated ending and got it. As disturbing as traveling around can be, jumping from one life to another, I couldn't see myself stuck in one life for decades or even more than a few years. It could be something that I just need to get out of my system, but I think it's more likely that I was made to be unhappy with monotony - I'm even feeling the creep of monotony in my life here, though I know that's me not doing my part lately to get as involved as I'd like to be, socially.
In fact, I rarely visit people, and I see it as a result of fear and laziness. What am I going to talk about? How will I leave? What if I don't want the food offered? You'd think that by now, I'd have all this down. But I still can't gossip like a Mozambican or eat without thinking about the effort needed in order to prepare it. Does that make me stubborn, maladjusted...or normal?
I'm too hard on myself. That I've been told a thousand times, enough to start believing it, but not enough to do anything about it.
The latest in school is this HIV/AIDS campaign called "ESH" or Escolas Sem HIV (schools free of HIV). It's a program developed by FDC, the Community Development Fund organized by Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel (widow of Mozambican hero Samora Machel). The idea is that FDC has a lot of arms reaching into the communities to try and fight HIV, including a very visible billboard campaign, home visits to HIV-positive people, and tons of other sponsored campaigns outside of the schools. The ESH program (pronounced "ehsh") started last year in my province at Nimi's school, and now it's at dozens of local schools.
The idea is that if teachers and students are empowered with information and a fund for performing activities, rewarding these schools who are judged to be the most successful, the fight against HIV can be won on a direct level.
Unfortunately, like all of these things, there's a big downside. All of the planning and organizing in the world can't change the fact that you're trying to change a behavior (unsafe sex with multiple partners) of many, by trying to change the behaviors of a few (the teachers and student activists). The idea that the educated will educate is all well and good, but it assumes a certain level of willingness to strengthen the message. The message received at the school level is watered-down: teachers know what the problem is, how to talk about it, who to speak with, but they don't know how to make a student embrace the idea with more than an academic interest. And so goes the house of cards. FDC says, "Use a condom and be faithful", the teacher says. "Use a condom", and the student says, "Look at the t-shirt I got from FDC!"
I was thinking about all of this when I started talking with Teresinha, the chefe of our ESH group, about what activities we were going to do this month. Well, of course we would have to do some debates which would free the students of questions, some theater to drive the message home, and some soccer games with a simple theme to really get the students to listen up. (Never mind that the debates would only happen in half the classrooms and end up debating whether "AIDS" meant one thing or another, the kids would all talk during the theater and miss the point, and the soccer game's message would be easily ignored.) And as I'm busy on Saturday, would you be so good as to run the meeting we scheduled?
Feeling the power shift, I suggested that we make a theme for the entire month of June: Does AIDS exist? I had heard that from Jenna's school, many students and teachers are asking this very question when the white person isn't around. So I figured it had to be relevant to the situation here (which it is) and it being so basic to the fight against HIV/AIDS, could spend easily one mont htalking about it, doing more good than condom demonstrations over the same period of time. Because the kids KNOW how to put a condom on, they KNOW how you get AIDS, they KNOW what the symptoms are, but if they don't THINK that it exists in the first place, what good does all that knowledge do? I didn't explain all of that, but I got the point across. And I asked what we could do to make a soccer game actually relevant to HIV/AIDS - apparently, we just need to put a banner up with a catchy slogan. Well, my theme got booted from the whole month down to just one week. But I'm running the meeting.
Not that I blame Teresinha. She cares for the students and wants the best for them. But somebody came and told them the solution was easy so they embraced it and refuse to see the solution as much closer to impossible than they'd ever like to imagine. Is that what I came here for? To be the resident cynic?
I suppose even the peacenik is considered violent in a Buddhist temple.
Peace
John
