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My African Adventure - Part 5

Submitted by editor_en on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 09:34.

DAY 5, 4TH APRIL 2008

Flying into Dar es Salaam you see a very different country from the one we’d just left. Tanzania is on the Indian Ocean, Ethiopia is land-locked; Dar looked pretty green as we flew over it, Addis is barren. And Dar is right in the middle of its rainy season, while in Addis and Awassa, we witnessed the first rain that has fallen in over 6 months!!

As we walked out of the airport, the rain fell… heavily. For 5 minutes, and then the sun came out. Wow, it’s hot, sticky, humid here. The city felt large and sprawling, despite the fact that the roads are small and crammed. And so many of the buildings that we passed seemed to be crumbling – yet there was absolutely no evidence of construction going on (unlike Addis, where it was plentiful: mostly paid for by the Chinese. I discovered on this trip that the Chinese seem to be everywhere across East Africa, building roads, buildings, sending over bicycles. It’s a good place for the Chinese to invest in, as there’s no questioning over their human rights record here – the money is needed just too badly).

Our first stop today was to meet with TAYOPA (“Tanzanian Youth Ambassadors living with HIV/AIDS”), a small group that we fund that uses community drama and music to help put across HIV prevention messages in the community. We went to meet them at their office, a small shack, in the middle of a township just outside of the city. We all crowded in to meet with the team, and also met a couple of MTV’ers: ‘Seven’ (her real name is a long-story, and she did tell us how she got it over dinner, but I’m too tired to write it all down again!) and Vanessa, who’s MTV’s first-ever VJ from Tanzania… and it seemed as if half of Tanzania’s press had come to join us too!

The first thing we heard was a testimonial from Philip, a member of TAYOPA, who told us his story of how he found out that he was HIV+ve: he’d been going out with his girlfriend for 18 months when they decided to get tested together; and together they found out that they were both HIV+ve. He said that his first reaction was that his life had just come to an end: the only people he knew who had AIDS, had all died – what hope did he have? He failed his exams, dropped out of school, as far as he was concerned, life was pretty much over for him… but things changed for Philip when he first decided to disclose his status to a friend. And here’s another difference between Tanzania and Ethiopia: I know that this is a generalisation, but my guess is that in Ethiopia, his friend would have disowned him for being ‘cursed’. But here, Philip’s friend didn’t disown him, but reached out to support him. He introduced him to TAYOPA, where he had the chance to meet other young people living positively with HIV – and realised that he had the choice of how to live his life, rather than letting HIV rule him. And a year later, Philip proposed and married his girlfriend, and they now have a beautiful baby son, who is 3 years old, and HIV-ve. I’m always in such of awe of people who are so happy to share their stories with other people – total strangers. But we need more young people like Philip, because Philip is so inspirational – just by telling his story, he can show other people that it’s ok to get tested, and that even if the results are worse-case-scenario, it’s absolutely not the end of your life… it’s just different.

Below: Dramatic street theatre scenes from TAYOPA

We sat and talked with the TAYOPA coordinators for some time, and the rain started to pour down. Here, when it rains… it really rains. So much so, that we were all having to raise our voices and shout to make sure that you could be heard. We discovered that though this is the rainy season, it only rains like this one week a year, and people hadn’t seen it rain like this in over 2 years. Just our luck!

TAYOPA wanted to show us an example of their community events, so we went and stood outside while we watched some music and drama. The 3 actors (who were absolutely incredible) were standing in the middle of the street and performed a play about young girls having sex with older men, for money and gifts. None of the actors wore shoes… and the rain had recently fallen – so they’re standing on this unpaved and incredibly muddy street, not just dancing in the puddles, but at one point, due to the storyline, lying face first in the mud. I guess it was all in the name of art? Not sure I would fancy lying down in the stones and the running mud that was coming down the street! They were fantastic actors, and within minutes, the drums that they played had already attracted at least 35 people from within the nearby shacks… children as young as 3 or 4, and women with their children (but I noticed that not many men came to watch). It’s a great way to attract people to see what you’re doing – and then use the music and the plays to put across prevention messages to the absolutely captive audience.

TAYOPA told us that before they received their grant from MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, they hadn’t had any other funding – but now that we’ve invested in them, others have also decided to do the same. Which is exactly the aim of SAF, trying to help start-up organisations and make them sustainable.

But I think that what I was most impressed with was Philip’s unbelievably clean white shoes – brogues – that he was wearing. How on earth did he keep them so clean, when there is mud all over the streets? Not just washing down the street, but flooding them – water up to people’s doors, cars getting stuck in these enormous ‘puddles’. Philip may have been happy – and successful – wearing white brogues, but for me, I quickly realised that there was only one footwear of choice: my flip-flops. How could you wear anything else in the mud-flooded streets of Dar?

Dinner was spent with Vanessa, MTV base Africa’s Tanzanian VJ, and Seven at the ‘Irish Pub’ and I think I had my best meal of the trip here: pizza, with mushrooms, sweet corn, and BANANA on top. No, not a Tanzanian delicacy but a particular mix that I used to put on my pizza when I was a student, and haven’t had since – I was so excited to see it on the menu. Now you might think that sounds disgusting, but I recommend that you try it one night… it’s delicious!

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