I went to the Primary School today to talk with the people there about our recently cancelled English classes. The director basically brushed us off. Whatever's going on, Blake and my directors don't know anything about it. All we can do is start looking for a new place to give lessons.
Since I was out that way anyway, I watched a class of Diamantino's. He's teached phys ed and doing some HIV/AIDS activist workshops as well. He was in a nearly empty classroom with about 30 kids packed against the back wall, making for a shit rehearsal area. I was given the only chair in the room, as is custom.
He started off very optimistic, posing a question about the use of condoms and how people feel about it. The students were all talking amongst themselves, completely disrespectfully. Diamentino asked the same question about 6 times, and finally got a very snippy and defensive response. He was visibly hurt.
And I knew exactly why. I get it all the time, this feeling of intense apathy because death and suffering is all around, though not as visible as it could be. So why try to change things?
Why should a student be committed to changing things if they're not going to see 40, need to help provide for their family and just want to enjoy life when they can? This is a question that runs to the very core of my job as well. Why are these kids in school?
Some of them are bored, and have a little money to spare. Some want to get a higher-paying job with the certificate they'll receive. Some come because their parents want them outside the house. Some come for the social atmosphere. These students are not just my enemies. They are the enemies of education. And it's a universal problem and so the question is not how to rid the school of these students, but how to motivate them to be in the room as active participants.
The other students, who really want to UNDERSTAND, will be your ally no matter what. Whether or not they're good at it, it doesn't matter. But they are so few, that they are often poisoned by the unmotivated masses.
And so here I was in the HIV/AIDS activist session with a very involved, caring leader that was turning into a nightmare. Nobody was getting anything out of it. And why? Was it really this question of motivation?
Perhaps it's the human condition. Kids are naturally egotistical until they really face mortality and see family as a way out. So what matters to a young human is "What will make ME feel good?" And to an older person who has een the light of living on in the lives of others is incredibly frustrated by this blindness and doesn't know what to do about it. Once you realize how good giving feels, you forget that you once did not know.
But it seems more hopeless than this. All the statistics say that the 10-14 year olds are the age group that we need to worry about. There are almost no 10-14 year olds with HIV, and the biggest group is 15-24. Prevention lies with them. But what is it that makes the 15-24 year olds so vulnerable in the first place? Is it this same invincibility that is perceived until it is too late, manifested in unprotected sex?
The first programs targeted at this behavior used scare tactics and a general morbid feeling. MAKE the youth feel mortality that isn't close to them, but close enough so that they can draw conclusions.
But it didn't work. Was it because fear just romanticizes rebellion that it backfired, or was it because the message was negative? It seems to be a little of both.
I think the right answer lies in internalizing mortality. Not making students afraid, but allowing them to feel a wider spectrum of emotions than the sadness of a funeral and the happiness of hearing the white guy say something...anything, apparently.
So maybe the solution lies in changing the approach of education away from facts and back to culture. This culture talks, and feels through communication. What if students could share their stories about relatives they lost due to HIV/AIDS? Augmented with facts and answers to questions, maybe it could actually put a human - an African - face on prevention.
The challenge to this end is where it will always be - execution and destigmatization. How do you find these students who are willing to say that a sister or brother died of AIDS? The stigma is so powerful here, you only hear secondhand that someone died from HIV/AIDS. Never from the family. It's considered to be too shameful.
So maybe I should start with anonymous stories, submitted voluntarily and then shared so that the writer can not be identified. And the kids eat up brochures, so maybe draw up some pamphlet which contains all the stories so that other students can get a feel for what others are going through, on their own terms and own time.
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I'm going to visit the bakery tonight. For real.
THE BAKERY
I walked in, glasses fogged, to see John Juan counting bread. 50 pieces in every crate. Behind him, large mixers were going full steam, flanked by 50 lb sacks of flour, a bag of salt (that I later found out to be packed with "vitamins" as well) and packets of yeast.
About 20 workers were mixing, cutting, arranging, folding or baking the bread in an automatic manner, using their bare hands. Some wearing aprons made from rice sacks, most with hats of one sort, and a few with shoes.
After the large mixing bowls, the dough goes to the cutting machine that slices it into baseball-sized pieces. Then, almost haphazardly, the pieces are separated and formed into more rounded shapes and tossed to the next station. At this station, there are two loaders who place the balls on large wooden racks, about 2' wide and 10' long. These racks are stacked to wait for the folders. There are two sets of folders: the initial fold group, and the arranging group. The initial fold group makes an indentation in the middle of the bread to wrap it around their hand, tosses it to the second group, and the second group places the folded bread on baking racks. These baking racks then go to the oven crew. The oven has 16 slots - 4 rows of 4 slots that are about 2' wide by 1' high. One rack of bread is loaded into each slot and the wooden rack is removed immediately. Once all 16 slots are filled, the oven operator turns it up full blast, taking a step back (and forcing me to do likewise) from the intense heat. And what's powering this monstrous oven that provides bread for over 150,000 people? Wood. After being baked for a few minutes (it doesn't take too long), the bread gets unloaded into huge rolling bins to be counted into crates, by John Juan.
The smell was so magnificent I had to eat a piece of bread when I got home. I promised the guys there I'd try and find a good place to teach them English - it could be the beginning of a fun relationship!
Peace
John
