Update and Thoughts on HIV/AIDS Education Challenges
Greetings Friends and Fam,
So I wrote this long email in my journal to just come here to the internet café and type really fast but of course I forgot it at home so I’ll just type what I remember now, I’ll probably write it better the second time anyway.
I’m still here, and still doing well. I don’t know if I told you but we already lost 2 members of our group, they went home early because I guess they had cultural conflicts, or it wasn’t right for them, so now we’re 19 out of the original 21. I found out my destiny for the next two years, they gave us our site postings. Everything is like this big secret in Peace Corps, lots of ambiguities, and making you wait in suspense to find out important information, but I’ve gotten to it and am even beginning to enjoy the wonder of it all. I will be in the Choma district of Southern Province about 34km from the center of Choma town. Fortunately, that’s exactly where I wanted to go. The Rural Health Clinic that I will be working with is 1.5 km from my mud hut, I will live about 900m away from the school in the village and I will be living near the headman and his wives (yes wives plural, but more about that later). I’m very excited, so I’ll be able to keep that address that I gave before:
Natalie J. Gill/PCT
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 630569
Choma, Southern Province Zambia
It’s a great area, the main roads are all paved since it’s near Livingstone where Victoria Falls is found so transport will be easy around there.
Some of the highlights for the last few weeks have been my first National Football game experience at Chipolopolo. It was Zambia vs. Mali and it was very exciting. Soccer here is as big as American Football or baseball. There was so much national pride, everyone was waving Zambia flags, wearing hats and scarves with the flag colors. Zambia won fortunately for me (losses sometimes cause mini-riots) the score was 2 to 1 and each goal they scored, the crowd would dance, chant, sing, there was so much excitement.
I also had a session on Zambia history, economy and politics so it gave me a good context for the position the country it’s in and how it would effect people from the big cities right down to the village where I’ll be. Zambia is in debt to the World Bank and IMF like most developing countries, but there is a possibility that part or all of the debt will be forgiven in a year or two so we’ll see how that goes. Also I will be serving through an election year (2006) so I get to see how a Zambian election is run. I’ve been still pumping through the training, 7 hour days, learning lots of valuable information that I will be using in my work. The Peace Corps approach to development is a respectable one. It’s focus is around sustainability and transferring skills to village community members so that they can meet the goals that they set for their communities for themselves. I had great concern, since PC is a government organization that it might be imposing, but I have not experienced it to be so as of yet, and I will have autonomy over my projects so I can do things the way that I want to when I get to the village.
Another good part about the past few weeks is that we finally delved more into the HIV/AIDS story of Zambia. We had 4 guest speakers, one a general practice doctor and 3 living healthy with HIV/AIDS. The doctor was an amazing speaker who was a large advocate for condom use and Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT). He has a radio show weekly where he talks about it and writes about it in the newspaper. He painted us a picture of some of the challenges we might come up against and encouraged us to encourage VCT in the villages. The other three speakers were some of the few who come out publicly to the community saying that they are HIV positive. They were brave and honest about their status, when they found out, and they brought a fact to HIV for many people who believe that all HIV positive people are skinny and sickly. The information I received in these sessions and the things I have been thinking about lately have given me many questions. I will share some with you and if you have any thoughts or opinions or possible solutions I would love to hear them. These questions do not represent everyone in Zambia of course but they are some possible scenarios that I might run into in some parts of my village.
How do you empower women who from the moment they begin menstruating are taught that they must please men, no matter what the circumstances, that if they are married even if they know their husband just came from another woman they must please them sexually. How do you, as a woman, discuss condoms in a married home? Or even Do you?
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs it goes from Self-Actualization to Ego and Self Esteem to needs for love then to Safety needs and Survival needs. So how do you get people who spend most of their time an d energy in the realm of survival needs (which include, food, water, clothing) to take time to also concentrate on safety needs which include HIV/AIDS prevention?
How do you encourage VCT when it is stigmatised because if you are taking a test then you must think you have HIV and if you think you have HIV then it must be because you are promiscuous an have too many sexual partners, how do you change people’s way of thinking?
How do encourage condom use when it is also stigmatised in the same way as above, or even some NGOs, some religious, focus on abstinence and give false information such as condoms pores are large enough for the HIV virus to get through so you shouldn’t use them? How do you help people unlearn false information?
That’s just a few of the things I’ve been wrestling with in my mind. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts.
For a little more context, from what I've experienced so far. Most places you go villages and bomas(cities), when you ask the questions is HIV/AIDS a problem here they say, "No it's a problem in the city" and viceversa, it's a problem in the village." When you ask what's the most common health problems people tend to say Malaria, Tuberculosis, etc. But most people who get TB, get it because their immune system has been weakened by HIV, but because there is a stigma with testing than people don't know their status and therefore don't think it's a problem. So how do you get people to acknowledge it as a problem. Also it is not Zambia culture to speak outright about sexual things, some languages don't even have words for sexual acts or genital body parts. So it creates a challenge around facilitating discussion and learning in that arena. And women are the most vulnerable because they have the least power and decision making opportunity when it comes to acts of sex, but when volunteers call for meetings around health issues, it's well attended by men and not women because they're busy at home with the three c's, cleaning, cooking and caring for the children. And even when women come to meetings, they are intimidated to speak when there are men around so you end up having to segregate meetings by gender. Ok, I think that can give you a little more of a picture so when you are thinking about the questions you can consider the above.
That’s all for now, I will write again soon, I look forward to hearing from folks.
Lots of Love,
Natalie
So I wrote this long email in my journal to just come here to the internet café and type really fast but of course I forgot it at home so I’ll just type what I remember now, I’ll probably write it better the second time anyway.
I’m still here, and still doing well. I don’t know if I told you but we already lost 2 members of our group, they went home early because I guess they had cultural conflicts, or it wasn’t right for them, so now we’re 19 out of the original 21. I found out my destiny for the next two years, they gave us our site postings. Everything is like this big secret in Peace Corps, lots of ambiguities, and making you wait in suspense to find out important information, but I’ve gotten to it and am even beginning to enjoy the wonder of it all. I will be in the Choma district of Southern Province about 34km from the center of Choma town. Fortunately, that’s exactly where I wanted to go. The Rural Health Clinic that I will be working with is 1.5 km from my mud hut, I will live about 900m away from the school in the village and I will be living near the headman and his wives (yes wives plural, but more about that later). I’m very excited, so I’ll be able to keep that address that I gave before:
Natalie J. Gill/PCT
Peace Corps
P.O. Box 630569
Choma, Southern Province Zambia
It’s a great area, the main roads are all paved since it’s near Livingstone where Victoria Falls is found so transport will be easy around there.
Some of the highlights for the last few weeks have been my first National Football game experience at Chipolopolo. It was Zambia vs. Mali and it was very exciting. Soccer here is as big as American Football or baseball. There was so much national pride, everyone was waving Zambia flags, wearing hats and scarves with the flag colors. Zambia won fortunately for me (losses sometimes cause mini-riots) the score was 2 to 1 and each goal they scored, the crowd would dance, chant, sing, there was so much excitement.
I also had a session on Zambia history, economy and politics so it gave me a good context for the position the country it’s in and how it would effect people from the big cities right down to the village where I’ll be. Zambia is in debt to the World Bank and IMF like most developing countries, but there is a possibility that part or all of the debt will be forgiven in a year or two so we’ll see how that goes. Also I will be serving through an election year (2006) so I get to see how a Zambian election is run. I’ve been still pumping through the training, 7 hour days, learning lots of valuable information that I will be using in my work. The Peace Corps approach to development is a respectable one. It’s focus is around sustainability and transferring skills to village community members so that they can meet the goals that they set for their communities for themselves. I had great concern, since PC is a government organization that it might be imposing, but I have not experienced it to be so as of yet, and I will have autonomy over my projects so I can do things the way that I want to when I get to the village.
Another good part about the past few weeks is that we finally delved more into the HIV/AIDS story of Zambia. We had 4 guest speakers, one a general practice doctor and 3 living healthy with HIV/AIDS. The doctor was an amazing speaker who was a large advocate for condom use and Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT). He has a radio show weekly where he talks about it and writes about it in the newspaper. He painted us a picture of some of the challenges we might come up against and encouraged us to encourage VCT in the villages. The other three speakers were some of the few who come out publicly to the community saying that they are HIV positive. They were brave and honest about their status, when they found out, and they brought a fact to HIV for many people who believe that all HIV positive people are skinny and sickly. The information I received in these sessions and the things I have been thinking about lately have given me many questions. I will share some with you and if you have any thoughts or opinions or possible solutions I would love to hear them. These questions do not represent everyone in Zambia of course but they are some possible scenarios that I might run into in some parts of my village.
How do you empower women who from the moment they begin menstruating are taught that they must please men, no matter what the circumstances, that if they are married even if they know their husband just came from another woman they must please them sexually. How do you, as a woman, discuss condoms in a married home? Or even Do you?
In Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs it goes from Self-Actualization to Ego and Self Esteem to needs for love then to Safety needs and Survival needs. So how do you get people who spend most of their time an d energy in the realm of survival needs (which include, food, water, clothing) to take time to also concentrate on safety needs which include HIV/AIDS prevention?
How do you encourage VCT when it is stigmatised because if you are taking a test then you must think you have HIV and if you think you have HIV then it must be because you are promiscuous an have too many sexual partners, how do you change people’s way of thinking?
How do encourage condom use when it is also stigmatised in the same way as above, or even some NGOs, some religious, focus on abstinence and give false information such as condoms pores are large enough for the HIV virus to get through so you shouldn’t use them? How do you help people unlearn false information?
That’s just a few of the things I’ve been wrestling with in my mind. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts.
For a little more context, from what I've experienced so far. Most places you go villages and bomas(cities), when you ask the questions is HIV/AIDS a problem here they say, "No it's a problem in the city" and viceversa, it's a problem in the village." When you ask what's the most common health problems people tend to say Malaria, Tuberculosis, etc. But most people who get TB, get it because their immune system has been weakened by HIV, but because there is a stigma with testing than people don't know their status and therefore don't think it's a problem. So how do you get people to acknowledge it as a problem. Also it is not Zambia culture to speak outright about sexual things, some languages don't even have words for sexual acts or genital body parts. So it creates a challenge around facilitating discussion and learning in that arena. And women are the most vulnerable because they have the least power and decision making opportunity when it comes to acts of sex, but when volunteers call for meetings around health issues, it's well attended by men and not women because they're busy at home with the three c's, cleaning, cooking and caring for the children. And even when women come to meetings, they are intimidated to speak when there are men around so you end up having to segregate meetings by gender. Ok, I think that can give you a little more of a picture so when you are thinking about the questions you can consider the above.
That’s all for now, I will write again soon, I look forward to hearing from folks.
Lots of Love,
Natalie
posted by Natalie | 6:57 PM
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