April 16th, 2012
I have been in Swaziland exactly 10 months and 7 days. Today I feel I had my first “completed”
success. I am involved in many
successful projects in my community, but most of them are in progress and will
be for while. Today Addie and I
held our last HIV Prevention class at the Refugee Camp… officially completing
our first project… it feels good
to be able to say I did this and it was a success!
Every Monday evening since the end of January we have taught
this HIV Prevention class which also covers decision making and goal setting,
all while learning English in the process. We have had an average 35-40 students present at each class. We teach outside, the students sit on a
crumbling cement wall and we sticky tack flip chart paper onto the side of a
building as our “chalkboard.”
Ironically the building whose wall we use is a large classroom that I
have never seen open. Only “proper
facilitators” are aloud to use it; we have been assured we are not proper facilitators. The levels of English speaking is
everywhere from no English to conversationally fluent. We teach in English and then have every
step translated into Somalian, then into Swahili, then sometimes into
French. Thankfully we have willing
students who translate for us, but it makes for some interesting lessons.
The student’s last piece of homework for the class was to
create posters with messages of HIV prevention to display around the Refugee
Camp. We had never given group
homework before so I was not sure it would be a success. However, today they all surprised
me. We had five very well done
posters. Detailed drawings, great
messages, and ALL of the information was correct. I guess despite the language barriers the students proved
that they had gained some knowledge.
To celebrate their hard work we made them each a certificate
for completing the course and thanks to PSI (local NGO that promotes male
circumcision and condom dispersion) we gave each student a box of 100
condoms. The condom conversation
was always a hot topic in class, but by the end of course each poster stated
that using a condom was one of the best ways to prevent against HIV, STIs, and
pregnancy. Addy had contacted PSI
and asked for a box of condoms and they delivered nine boxes totally 27,000
condoms. We are passing them out
like emaswedi (candy). To really
drill condom usage I even did a condom demonstration before giving them out to
our students. This got a lot of
embarrassed giggles, as I am a young, single, female, showing a group of mostly
men, mostly Islamic students how to use a condom. However, I also saw a lot of nodding heads taking in my
directions. We had a little ceremony
where they got their certificate, their box of condoms, and got to shake our
hands and get their photo taken, and of course a round of applause. I was so proud to see how happy they
were to have participated and be acknowledged for their work.
After class we were treated like celebrities. Everyone wanted a picture with us and
they were so thankful. It’s a
bittersweet ending. I am happy to
see the successful end to a project but I am sad to say goodbye to Monday
nights at the camp. However, we
are continuing our English lessons on Tuesday nights so I still get to hang out
with all my new friends!
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| Presenting the Certificates |
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| The whole group in front of the building we can't use! |
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| One of the posters the students made |
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