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My African Adventure - Part 4

Submitted by editor_en on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 12:10.

DAY 4, 2ND APRIL 2008

We left Awassa early in the morning for the drive back to Addis, where Sara and I met up with Bill Roedy (head of MTV, and Chair of the Staying Alive Foundation) and Peter Piot (Exec Director, UNAIDS and SAF Board Member).

Today was an opportunity to spend some time with a group of young people who are working within Addis to promote condom use with their peers, and to try to break down the stigma associated even with carrying a condom. The project – Wastena (which means “guarantee”) – isn’t funded by the Staying Alive Foundation, so our purpose today was to evaluate the work that they’re doing to see if we want to fund them going forward.

Peter and Bill travelled in the diplomatic car, with police escort. How intimidating must it have been for this group, to have a police-escorted car bring the head of UNAIDS and the head of a TV station, direct to their doorstep? But the crowd from Wastena were very very cool. There were about 25 young people in the community centre plus the 4 Wastena coordinators: Bibi, Birhan, Paulos and Hannah.

The group gathered in the room were from across Addis, all of them at school, heading up their anti-AIDS clubs, and they were here to learn about HIV/AIDS, take part in ‘condom-art’, and take back condoms for distribution in their local areas. Paulos opened up the meeting with a q&a session: where did AIDS come from? (the answer given was ‘Latin America and Africa’), how was it first transmitted? (‘from a thin man in a forest’ came the answer), and how do you get it? (although everyone knew the way that HIV is transmitted, someone in the audience mentioned that many people here in Ethiopia believe that it’s a curse… again, the stigma of AIDS is so prevalent here). Any time someone gave a wrong answer, Paulos (who is a full-time nurse and counsellor) made sure that the correct information was given. Paulo had a very easy and relaxed style, so it didn’t feel like a lecture – everyone was interested in what he had to say and took part: he was very impressive.

Birhan got to do ‘show and tell’, giving an excellent demonstration on how to use a condom; and Bibi then showed all of us how to make ‘condom art’. Both Birhan and Bibi would make excellent ‘Blue Peter’ presenters: “here’s one I made earlier” was never more appropriate.

Below: Birhan gives the perfect condom demonstration...

We then spent some time talking to some of the people taking part, finding out why they were there and what they were doing at their schools to promote HIV awareness. I asked how many people had been tested, and about half the room put their hands up, which was impressive: but here in Ethiopia, if you’re under 16, you can’t get tested without your parent’s permission… and because it’s not culturally acceptable to really talk about sex at all, I think that it’s highly unlikely that a 14 or 15 year old is going to ask their parent if they can get an HIV test, as they’d need to admit they’d had sex in the first place!

When I asked one of the young guys what he was studying, he told me that he was learning about “tourist sex”. To be honest, I was quite surprised at that – what was tourist sex, I asked him; and what sort of things did you study as part of your degree in order to be able to go into tourist sex as a career? It was his turn to look at me as if I was crazy… it took me a while to get there, but I finally realised that he was talking about the “tourist sector”. Do you think that I have a one-track mind???

Tonight we all went out for dinner and got to know each other a little bit better. Hannah is an English girl (a big Arsenal fan, but I won’t hold that against her!) who’s been living in Addis for the last 6 months… and although a volunteer with Wastena (as is everyone else), it’s pretty much a full-time job for her. We talked with Hannah, Bibi, Birhan and Paulos about Wastena, and how much funding they currently have – which, with the exception of some very small seed funding from a UN agency, they have no other money to support the work that they do.

If anyone’s wondering what sort of project appeals to the Staying Alive Foundation, Wastena is a really good example: it’s run by young people; the work that they do, on HIV prevention, reaches other young people in the community (in the last 3 months, they’ve already distributed 1600 condoms to young people in and around Addis, and run 3 training sessions), and they have very little, or no funding. Start up projects like this one are absolutely perfect for SAF to fund: it’s why we set the Foundation up in the first place, because we believe that if we’re able to give small funding and resources to young groups and individuals just like those at Wastena, it’s these sorts of projects that are able to make the difference at the grassroots level: where it really matters.

I’m sad to report that there was no dancing tonight, as I’m sure are you… I will have to do better when I get to Dar, for which we’re leaving for in the morning.

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