The ABCs

Right now, I’m doing the preliminary work for two fairly big projects that I have a lot of high hopes for. The first is a library/literacy project that I’m hoping will help kids develop a love of reading and learning. The second is a project using ideas I got from our recent Life Skills Training to help raise awareness of HIV/AIDS. Both deal with the very difficult task of behavior change. However, I’m hoping with a multi-pronged approach and a little help from my friends I’ll be able to break some ground in developing healthier lifestyles that include a love for reading.

C is for cookie!

I grew up as a Sesame Street kid and from a young age, I’ve loved books and reading. A lot of this was thanks to my parents reading to me from as early as I can remember and also from taking part in library reading programs during the summers of my elementary school days. Out here in the village, it’s hard to find books. Reading is not something a lot of people do in their free time. However, I don’t think it’s out of lack of desire. People here, and especially kids, are often very bored. Africa may lack many things but one thing it is not short of is time. And with so much time, kids could potentially read a lot. Since I find myself with a lot of time now that I’m here in Africa, I sometimes read story books to my little 6 year old host sister (thanks Mom and Anita for sending kids books!). Even though she doesn’t understand English, she is always excited when I pull out a book now. The first time I read “Peter Rabbit” to her, we finished and she immediately said, “Bala gapa!” which means “Read again!” A lot of my buddies from Grade 12 also talk to me about wanting to read more books. I’ve leant a few some of mine. But really, we have a beautiful library room at my high school. It just lacks books…

As I’ve mentioned in a few earlier posts, my school was among the 31 selected to receive 1,100 books from Books for Africa as part of the Books for Peace Library Project orchestrated by PCV Rose Zulliger. Right now, we are undergoing fund raising efforts both locally and back at home in the states to ship all the books over to South Africa. We need to raise a total of $5000 at home for 35,000 books. Our schools together are raising about $6000 for shipping. On the home front we are about halfway there. We just need a little over $2,500 more to meet our goal. The way Peace Corps fundraising works is that we don’t receive any of the money until all of it has been raised so we are really trying to push to get that last $2,500 before the middle of May. That way we can start the books moving so hopefully they will get here, get sorted, get delivered, and be on our book-shelves by sometime in September. So, once again, I’m asking for help. Every little bit counts, every dollar you give brings over 7 books so I appreciate whatever you can give. You can donate at:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=674-045

Once you donate, shoot me an email with your mailing address. I’d like to send a little token of appreciation for all who contribute.

Getting the books here is only the first step in this campaign. Some of my teachers and I have already started brainstorming different programs we can do with the library to encourage its use. We also want to get other teachers to start using it more and assign research projects using the library. Currently we have teacher librarians, but if local fundraising efforts go well, I’d really like to get a community member involved as a permanent librarian who can really focus on making sure everything is in order and used well. I’ve already talked to the village priests and my local NGO buddy and they are all excited and want to help out. Hopefully we can come up with some community awareness events to build up excitement and knowledge about the library before the books arrive so that once they do, we’ll have some volunteers to help us organize and arrange them all. If the books arrive in September then I’ll have a whole year to work with people involved to make sure things go smoothly, the community takes ownership, and we come up with strategies to keep building on our collection and reach out to the community. Of course the devil is in the details, but for now excitement is there.

Abstain, Be faithful, and C?

The other big project I’m trying to get rolling has to do with combating HIV/AIDS. Together with the Life Orientation teachers in my high school, I’m trying to start an awareness and testing campaign in my community. The local clinic is about 8km from where the high school and most of the community lives. With just one nurse, outreach during the week is not really possible since if she left, the clinic would have to be closed. Moreover, people in the village often fear getting tested because though tests are supposed to be confidential, there is fear of gossiping. To try and get around this, I’m trying to find outside groups that could come once a quarter and set up a voluntary testing station at the school. This would hopefully be open to the whole community and hopefully get people into the mindset of not just getting tested, but getting tested regularly. To bolster this effort, the Life Orientation teachers and I will be working throughout the school year to add basic life skills activities into the classroom to help foster a more open and honest dialog about HIV.

One place I’ve realized I need to start is with the C word. Yes, it’s tricky as an educator to talk about sex with kids. By law, we are not supposed to talk about condoms with kids under 14 (even though some kids are sexually active before then…). However, even with older kids, some teachers prefer to say C stands for “Change your attitude” rather than “Condomize.” If teachers are even afraid to talk about condoms, how are kids expected to even know how to use them properly? Because let’s be honest, we aren’t going to stop the kids from having sex. Maybe, with open honest discussion, we’ll convince a few to stop, but in a village where the main forms of entertainment are soccer, drinking, throwing rocks at goats, and sex. Sex wins out as the cheapest, easiest, and most fun. Hopefully with the library, after school clubs, and weekly movies, we can give kids other ways to have fun but until all those are rolling, we need to at least give kids knowledge on how to have safer sex. Inspired by stories from some SA15 volunteers, I’ve got ideas about how to help bridge this gap in knowledge. Hopefully I can get my teachers on board too.

Lastly, still in an extremely nascent phase, is another front I am hoping to potentially open in the battle against HIV in the village. After talking with my NGO buddy, Seatlasaone, I realized we could use the school holiday camps we’ve been doing in a more sustainable way by utilizing the kids that have finished high school but are just sitting around because they haven’t got jobs. Using the PC Life Skills manual, we are going to try to recruit and train a group of these youth to lead camps for kids during school breaks when they are generally most bored. Hopefully this will help ensure camps continue after I leave and also will empower those unemployed youth with some valuable and marketable skills. This though, is still little more than a brainstorming session and in the next few weeks hopefully will become something more solid.

The task is incredibly daunting no matter how we approach it, but we have to face it. Fortunately I’ve found sharing ideas with friends and other volunteers is one of the best ways to stay motivated and think of new things so, if you have any ideas, thoughts, or suggestions on ways to help tackle the issue of HIV/AIDS, send them my way.