Every 1st of December marks the celebration of World AIDS Day. Last year on this day I went to my Peace Corps neighbors village which was having a big district wide celebration, but this year I decided to bring the party to Misengo.
Overall I think that things went pretty well. We were supposed to start at 8am with a march, but because this I live on Zambian time we didn’t start until after 10am. We then assembled the students and began our march through the “village center.” I had hoped we would sing a song, but instead we just had the group of older girls in the front yell “FIRST DECEMBER” followed by everyone else yelling “WORLD AIDS DAY”. In theory it sounds like a good idea but my bet is that almost all of the pupils who were yelling world AIDS Day had no idea what they were actually saying!
After our march we returned to the school and had our main program that featured speeches by the headman of the village, clinic nurse, and deputy head teacher. I thought these speeches were really good because they really emphasized how important it is to be safe during sex by practicing the ABC’s (which stands for abstinence, being faithful, and condom), and just they that should use the power to say NO and not to pressure other people. It was just good to have these messages coming from people who are leaders in the community.
My favorite portion of the day was the drama and poem section. Zambian LOVE role plays. I remember in school, or even my peace corps training, if you had to do a role play in front of the class chances are you felt embarrassed or pretended to because it wasn’t cool to be into it. Well in Zambia it is exactly the opposite! We had a drama created by the students about how having multiple partners can increase your chances of getting HIV and the best way to avoid is by abstaining from sex. And the poems here are not just read, they are read and danced to robot style. My favorite poem of the day went something like this:
“My name is Mulenga Charles, and I have a poem for you entitled AIDS. AIDS is a killer disease. Thank you.”
But just imagine it going to a beat and having the kid doing some arm motion as he was saying it. Hilarious!
We ended the day with some netball, girl’s soccer, and a soccer game between the grade 8 students and older people in the community. This is where the event took a little dip thanks to some of the older Zambians who were set to play in the soccer game. At first two of the men sent a teacher to come and ask me if they would be receiving a reward for playing. I said no and thought the subject was over. About 15 minutes later I see another teacher approaching me after having just left the two men and know what he is about to ask me. Before he opens his mouth I simply say, ‘no I will not be giving them a reward’ he laughs and then asks if I would be willing to give the two men money so that after the game they can buy beer. Well, naturally I get annoyed and instead of sending my reply back with the teacher I go direct to the men and tell them their request is unacceptable. This was a school event and to ask me to buy them beer for playing a simple game is just ridiculous, and if they refuse to play unless they get a reward then they can just go home now. I then went on to explain that I spend a lot of time and money arranging for the non-alcoholic traditional Zambian drink monkoyo to be made as well as over 250 scones so that should be reward enough for them. After that they stopped complaining and played the game.
So with the beer incident being the only damper overall it was a good day. I had hoped that people would be getting tested to know their status, but not many adults came which was disappointing. However, I think I will just look at this event as a opener to a VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing) I am planning to have in May.
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