World AIDS Day!!!

So today is December 1st, World AIDS Day, and thus the first day of events in my (perhaps overly ambitious) week-long Luta Contra SIDA program. I gotta say...so far so good. Before I reveal everything it is important to understand that over the course of the past 28 days, we’ve been preparing for this week. “Training” entailed a crash course for four leaders of the communities in my valley in AIDS awareness, facilitating group sessions and good discussions, making ribbons, preparing the week’s agenda, assigning AIDS related homework to the students, and previewing a series of films called Scenarios From Africa. I have also been back and forth to Povoçon nearly every day for the past three weeks and was also in SV for several days trying to arrange all the necessary materials, and will have to go back there on Friday to pick up T-shirts and a basketball. Anyway, here’s exactly what’s going on in Txangreja this week, and how we managed to do it...in abbreviated form:

Monday - Formador (host) Bebia
PP Presentation on schedule of events (Caley)
2 Segments form Scenarios From Africa followed by discussion
(supplied by PC)
“What is AIDS?”: Oral presentations by the students
Information Session with Nurse Vincente
Milk and cookies (VAST funds)

Tuesday - Formador Julia
2 Segments form Scenarios From Africa followed by discussion
(supplied by PC)
“How do People Get AIDS?”: Oral presentations by the students
Information session with the pediatrician from Ribeira Grande (transportation paid by VAST grant)
Juice and Cake (VAST funds)

Wednesday - Formador Didi
3 Segments form Scenarios From Africa followed by discussion
“How Do People Avoid AIDS?”: Oral presentations by the students
Twister Competition (Twister game supplied by PCV in Povoçon)
Catxupa lunch (VAST funds)

Thursday - Formador Caley
3 Segments form Scenarios From Africa followed by discussion
Distribution of poster making materials (pens, watercolors, markers, chalk, posterboard..all supplied bt VAST funds)

Friday - Formador Pedro
4 Segments form Scenarios From Africa followed by discussion
Continue poster making
Radio Praça (I’m taking a page out of the CV’n politician’s book, and have arranged an 8 minute, continuously repeating, never ending music/message clip to be played in the plaza for about 6 hours during the day...financed by VAST funds)

Saturday
Student posters hung in the polivalente (soccer place)
Balloons, ribbons and streamers put up in Polivalente (VAST funds)
Soccer/Basketball Tournament: (organized by and transportation provided by community)
Poster Contest (judged by 4 formadors)
Radio Praça

Sunday
Filming of AIDS Pledges (We'll film about 50 kids making a 15-20 second pledge wherein they'll state their name, age, and nationality, and then promise to do their part to fight AIDS in their community. If things go well, I'll post them on Youtube with a link to the World AIDS Day page. IF things go REALLY well, I'll extract the audio from these clips and have that broadcast on 96.9 Radio Kriola over the course of the following weeks.)
Radio Praça
Inauguration of AIDS Day symbol painting in Polivalent (VAST funds)
Soccer/Basketball Tournament (transportation provided by VAST funds and community contribution)
Community AIDS Palestra and written test led by all 4 formadors (paper, pens and copy charges through VAST funds and community contribution)
World AIDS Day materials and prizes distributed (VAST funds, community contribution and third party)
Announcement of Poster Contest Winners
Presentation of Tournament Trophies (VAST funds and community contribution)
Community Dinner (VAST funds and Community contribution)
Community Dance (Community contribution and third party)
Condom Distribution (Over 3000 condoms donated by PMI and the Delegaçon de Saude in Sao Vicente)

This morning I hung posters (provided by Peace Corps and the Minister of Health in Sao Vicente) all over town. The motto is “Be a Leader in the Fight Against AIDS.” Then I walked around town distributing the little red ribbons and pins for people to wear. With Benvinda’s help, we’ve made about 500 of them...more than enough to go around, and each day I’ll try to distribute about 50. After that we hung a bright banner (the materials having been supplied through the Peace Corps VAST grant) out in front of the school here. It says, I think, “There is no cure for AIDS. Your Life is valuable….protect it and be a leader in the fight against AIDS.” All that before 8:00am.

So after 8, when school starts, things really got rolling. After my english classes, the entire kinder and primary classes convened in the library for Day One of the SIDA (that’s AIDS in Portuguese) PALESTRA (seminar?). It got started in the manner that all good meetings get started...with a Powerpoint Presentation. This was one of my own design, and it basically laid out for them (with pictures of all the kids and really cool transitions between the slides I might add) the schedule of events for the week. After that we began showing segments from Scenarios from Africa. These films are really a great tool for initiating discussions about sensitive topics like AIDS, domestic violence, alcoholism, etc. There are 6 DVDs worth of short films and all of them were the created (written by, filmed by, starring, etc.) by youth and youth groups on the African continent, then dubbed into 8 different languages (including Portuguese) and copied en masse for distribution to various Peace Corps posts. I was lucky enough to get my hands on some of them and I’m terribly thankful for that, because they were a HUGE hit.

The first one we showed was a cartoon explanation of the AIDS virus, complete with little demonic cells racing around trying to kill the good cells. The kids were laughing through most of it, but more importantly, they were paying attention to it. We followed that with a discussion of the material covered in the cartoon to make sure they knew what AIDS was, then went on to show another clip, followed by another short discussion. In a real boon for Peace Corps, and perhaps my own ego, the regional school coordinator happened to be here in Txangreja observing classes (I didn’t know she was coming) and was nearly in tears to see a white guy speaking perfect kriolu and working with local teachers on an AIDS project showing cartoons, in Portuguese, to kids. She asked me if I’d be willing to travel to all the other schools in Santo Antao to do the same thing. The Peace Corps mantra of SUSTAINABILITY popped into my head at that moment and I told her I’d do something better than that...I’d make copies of the films (it says right on the front of the box that copying and distributing them is encouraged) and train Cape Verdian teachers of her choosing how to lead the sessions themselves.

We followed that up with the Cape Verdian equivalent of book reports about AIDS. Of course, there are no books here, which makes book reports difficult. So this weekend a visitor to Txangreja would have seen about a dozen kids running around with a piece of paper and a pencil asking adults what AIDS was, how you got it, and how you avoid it. I can tell you that some of the information presented today was, to say the least, inaccurate. (Except for Rosie’s report, who perspicaciously called the nurse in Garça to get her information.) That actually worked out for the best however, as it gave our newly trained discussion leaders the perfect opportunity to use their recently hones facilitation skills, and in the end, we got everything straight and clear in the minds of our charges.

After that Nurse Vincent (a local) showed up and, in the manner of most Cape Verdian men in a position of power and influence (which is exactly what a nurse in a town like Txangreja is), talked for about three hours about why he was qualified to be giving this information in the first place, and then immediately put everyone to sleep by literally reading word for word from a 2003 technical and statistical manual about AIDS that he apparently downloaded from a UN Website. Milk and Cookies saved the day.

Anyway, that’s day one already under wraps, and you’ve got the program above to see how the rest of the week is (supposed to be) running. I’m gonna try to take a ton of pics bright smiling faces.