Q&A

09/01/05

I went up to the church after lunch. There must've been 700 people in the congregation. Before they ended they switched to English and introduced me. The pastor actually said something like 'and now let me introduce our whiteman.' They asked me to stand and greet the congregation. I thanked them (again) for their warm welcome and support for our project.

Robert and I started walking towards the secondary school where the Q & A was to be held. There were literally hundreds of youths streaming all around us. They assembled on the grass. Robert introduced me, and I started in. It started rough. Real rough. Not a good venue. Open air, the kids all spread out. They had trouble with the speed of my speech. They were embarrassed to ask questions. But I pushed on. I spoke up, and spoke slow. I gave a little basic HIV/AIDS information, what it is, how it effects your body, how it is transmitted, how to protect yourself. Kids started asking questions. Some of them were strange questions, about the effectiveness of injecting tomatoes with the virus to infect others and if you could get it by having sex with animals. But some were very informed questions about new prevention of mother to child transmission techniques. But all in all, the majority were very basic questions that revealed the mythologies and lack of real knowledge about HIV/AIDS ('Can you still get it if you have unprotected sex with a woman but pull out before ejaculation?' And, 'isn't it true that circumcision prevents you from getting it?' Seriously.) Our time was coming to an end so I offered to continue the conversation in smaller groups or even for the kids to feel free to ask me questions just when they see me walking around. Afterwards, a couple groups of kids came up to request meetings; I'm starting tomorrow at 9am. When Robert said, "What do we say to our visitor?" Most of the kids said "Thank you" and one girl said "Take me abroad." All in all, it was a good, if difficult, experience. Just like everything else here.

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