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| The kids looking over the finished product of HIV messages that they created. |
If you are a faithful blog reader, you’ll remember that last November we had a camp for the same group of kids that I have been meeting with every month over the past year. We’ve had ten support group meetings in total, two camps, two events with caregivers of the teens, as well as an informational meeting with community stakeholders (government office department heads, local NGO directors, and a dozen or so chiefs from the area). So we’ve come a long way from our first meeting last September with five teens and a really really really nervous me. I knew from the first day that this was one part of my service I didn’t want to screw up. I’ve stressed out, laughed, listened, been inspired, and cried over these kids. Without the chance to work with them, my service wouldn’t be half of what it is.
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| Tie dying! |
This
time our camp was five days with about 50 kids from about a dozen villages in
our area, including some from the other side of the river which is incredibly isolated.
And we had health care workers from almost as many villages, including some
from villages that don’t yet have an HIV positive teen support group but which
want to start one. They were able to see what we do and will hopefully build
from there. It feels like we have started a movement.
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| Tie dyed bandanas drying outside. |
This
camp focused on using different forms of creative expression to encourage the
development of healthy coping strategies and psychosocial support. We brought
in a spoken word artist to do a poetry session with them. We tie-dyed (or tried
our best). We sang and did dramas. We painted pill boxes so the teens would be
able to more discretely take their pills (and not forget them!). We created a
giant patchwork (inspired by the AIDS Quilt in the US) with messages about HIV
and Botswana and their lives. We created posters with prevention and support
messages to be hung in their communities at the clinics/town halls. We had
condom Olympics to teach about safe sex (yep, you read that right. Re: condom
water balloon tosses, condom demo relay races, condom tug of war). It was quite
an adventurous five days. Twenty-some months ago I remember uttering the
following words to my program manager during a conversation about my future
site placement, “The only thing I don’t really want to do is teach sex ed to
high school kids.” Fast forward two years, it’s one of my favorite things to
do.
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| Water balloon toss with condom balloons. They got soaked! |
Through all of these sessions and activities, it was an amazing thing to see the kids open up in ways they haven't done before. One boy, usually with a blank stare fixed on his face, could be seen running around screaming playfully at the top of his lungs and even competing in the talent show with his ridiculous dance moves. Another girl who hardly speaks in meetings boldly took one of our nurses by the hand to lead her through the tie dying process, explaining every step as they meant. These may seem like minor things, but for some of these kids to let their guard down in this way is a huge accomplishment.
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| Another Peace Corps Volunteer doing a condom demo with a health educator. |
The
most meaningful part for me came from a session we had about issues of
disclosure. The teens went around and discussed the first time they learned
they were HIV positive—who told them, how they felt, etc. I imagine it was the
first time voicing this memory for the kids, and for many it was undeniably a
painful one. I was surprised at the different stories they were told—one was
told by his mother that he cut himself while playing when he was a baby and
happened to mix blood with someone HIV positive. Another was told that he
received a blood transfusion from his HIV positive cousin in the clinic as a
baby. To be fair, some of the stories they were told might be true, but the
nurses seemed to think they were lied to. For the age they are, most likely it
was mother-to-child transmission, and the parent/caregiver was not entirely
truthful in telling them. Another was only told he was taking pills for an “ear
problem.” Another girl was only told by her mother that her pills were called “ARVs”
but not what they were for. One day while sitting in the classroom when the
students first learned about HIV/AIDS in school, she made the connection that
she is HIV positive. I imagined a nine-year old girl sitting in her classroom
realizing the truth about her status for the first time and being surrounded by
HIV negative classmates, while she felt completely alone. Another student was
told he is HIV positive by his teacher, but to this day was never told anything
by his parents or caregivers. And yet another girl was told, plain and
straight, by her mother, “You have HIV. If you do not take your pills, you will
die young.”
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| The teens painted and personalized their own pill boxes. |
During
this session about disclosure, a topic many of them had not bridged yet, we
discussed who you should disclose to, how and when you should do it, and even
what you can say. And then the health
care providers I was facilitating with did an amazing thing. They said to the
kids, “Wena, ga o mogare. Wena, o wena,” meaning “You, you are not the virus.
You are you.” To these kids, some of them just twelve years old, it was maybe
the first time someone had phrased their status to them in this way. You have
HIV, but you are not HIV. You, tsala ya
me, are you.
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| A health educator talks to the teens about prevention of mother to child transmission. |
Another
important moment came in teaching the teens on the last day about the risk of
reinfection and the realities of having an HIV negative partner. The day before
during one of the sessions, the teens were introduced to the idea of different
“types” of HIV, whereby even if you are HIV positive, you can still contract
another strain of HIV that might be resistant to a certain treatment. The teens
were really disheartened to learn this, as they thought once you have HIV, you
have HIV. End of story. Some of the girls were even asking if they could ever safely
have a baby. So we talked to them about these issues, about the risk of
reinfection and even the possibility of having a sexual partner who is HIV
negative. If your viral load is low, the risk of infection to your sexual partner
also drops. The message was: it is okay to love someone who is HIV negative and
even to want to have a baby with them. You can protect yourself and protect
them at the same time. Although there are risks, they can be mitigated. While
it took a while for them to grasp this message, it is such an important one.
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| "Mr. and Ms. Teen Club" beauty pageant (one of the pageant questions was to correctly do a male and female condom demo). |
During
those five days of little sleep and constantly being “on,” I had a couple of
moments like this last one where I felt almost a sense of euphoria because of
the overwhelming feeling that I am exactly where I am supposed to be in the
world doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing. One of the 13-year-old HIV
positive girls who I work most closely with said during the camp that she was
grateful to be learning about these topics, because there are some kids who
were not there who are not so lucky. I am acutely aware of how significant and
rare those moments of purpose and fulfillment are. They feel like a welcomed
reward for all of the loneliness, anxiety, stress, tears, and truly countless
struggles I been through over the past two years. It is a powerful and redeeming
feeling to know that you are the source that initiated something at its
beginning. It is equally powerful to know that it was, and continues to be,
worth it.
More pictures from the patchwork the teens created:
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| This teen wrote down the poem she wrote and performed during the poetry session earlier in the day . It's one of my favorites. |
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| Our learning space featuring some of the artwork from the week. |
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