As volunteers we face challenges everyday. Some personal challenges are communicating, motivating farmers, getting my clothes clean J, surviving the rainy season, and talking about HIV/AIDS. The last has been my greatest challenge recently. New Start, an NGO, came recently to conduct mobile VCT (Voluntary Counseling and Testing). The day was successful – 65 people in my area now know their status (HIV+/-). New Start will be coming back on March 7 and we hope to test many more people, including married couples. It’s important to test couples together for several reasons – end rumors, improve communication, and deal with possible discordance. I have great counterparts who are helping me sensitize the community. In other HIV news…the condom campaign is going well. I even have a few women who use female condoms – they like making me blush by talking about it!
Now the challenges…I went to a funeral on Saturday for a 52 year old woman who died of AIDS. It’s no secret that she was positive but some of her family members are refuting it. Denial is a barrier to educating people on HIV. This is a largely preventable virus/disease but by denying its existence in families we thereby deny prevention.
An HIV+ friend in Katete referred an HIV+ soldier from the camp near me to speak with me. He has made his status public and spoke out last year to the media that he is a soldier with HIV. HIV is rampant in the national service but awareness campaigns seem to miss this population segment. The soldier was taking a stand and attempting to create awareness. For this, he was discharged! He is currently appealing it so he is still at the camp spreading his message. He wants to help with the program on March 7, for which I’m grateful. So how do we get his fellow soldiers to end the denial and admit there is a problem if they will be discharged for disclosing their status and helping others?
Overall, everything is going well. We (PCV’s) were told that we would be out of the village a lot our second years and thankfully I have found that to be false. Since being back from the States I’ve been able to spend more time in the village. We have had fewer PC mandated programs and now there is too much work to be leaving! The weather has helped my mood. We had flooding across the province (not good for my mood) but we then had 2 weeks without rain and now it is only raining for an hour a day. I’m much happier when I can get out and work without being covered in mud.
