august (subtitle: doing SOMETHING)

and another month is over. i donºt know how this happens. you know why this blog is a good exercise (apart from keeping my readers happy)? i often end a week/month/whatever feeling like i havenºt really done much, but when i come here to try to sum it up, i see that i at least did SOMETHING.

at the beginning of august alison and i ran a few mini-trainings for the icap office and medical staff. the first was on hiv and safe sex. we did this at the request of our boss, partly because she believes that many people in the office either donºt know what they should, or arenºt practicing safe sex, and partly as part of an initiative from the provincial director of health to have all employees of health-related ngos knowing something about the health topics the ngo works with. so on a saturday morning (much to the consternation of many employees) we ran a training using the same slide presentation we had prepared for peer educator trainings. we talked about how hiv acts in the human body, how treatment works, various means of transmission, and prevention methods. it was really interesting for a number of reasons. we gave a pre and post test on the material, a way to see what people know before and after a training. the evaluations were anonymous, but we divided them between medical and non-medical staff. the non-medical staff learned a lot, which was great. the medical staff got clarification on a few points, but for the most part their understanding remained the same, which is actually good, because it means they didnºt have a lot of misconceptions in the first place. but the thing that was really interesting (and also kind of annoying) was that during the parts about safe sex, the people who got the most giggly and jokey were the male medical staff! c'mon guys, youºre supposed to be talking about this stuff for a LIVING, and you canºt talk about how to put on a condom without giggling and making jokes, and you hold a female condom with the tip of a pen as if itºs going to get you dirty or something? yeah, i know, boys will be boys, but i was still kind of disappointed by that. if the medical personel canºt deal with talking about this stuff, itºs no wonder that the people theyºre supposed to be helping donºt always have good information. some of the non-medical male staff, on the other hand, asked tons of really good questions so you could tell they were actually getting something out of it, so that was good.

the other training alison and i did was a tech training. the icap office is a pretty "modern" looking place, computers and technology and whatnot. all office staff and many doctors have company computers, and thereºs a copy machine, fax machine, and scanner for everyone to use. but many people only know how to use this equipment on the most basic levels, and people are constantly asking us for help. after seeing our power point presentations (complete with lots of animations) people were really interested in learning how to use that program well too. so we planned 2 afternoons worth of trainings. on the first day alison taught people the basics of power point, how to make a presentation aesthetically pleasing, and the fun stuff like animations. on the second day i showed them a program to learn how to touch-type, and how to use the scanner and fax machine. teaching people how to use this technology, i often notice a similarity in talking about technology stuff with family members of other generations. depending on how long youºve been using certain types of technology, youºre more comfortable and adept at playing around to figure out new stuff. for instance, i had no idea how to use the office scanner, but i figured it out in an afternoon, but many people have only been using computers, etc. for a very few years. if you think technology has changed/improved rapidly in the us, itºs changed at lightening speed here. another difficulty a lot of people have is that almost all the equipment and programs are in english, so that even if they did feel comfortable playing around, theyºre severly limited by language. anyway, it was a pretty minimal tech training, but we covered some basic things people had shown interest in, and made some staff who arenºt around us a lot aware that weºre here and available to help if they have other questions. and because our boss was supportive in allowing people to get out of work to attend these trainings, iºm sure we could do similiar activities in the future if there was more interest.

on the second day of that tech training, with only about a days notice, i signed up to participate in a bike ride to nicoadala, the next town up the highway from quelimane. the story behind the ride and my participation in it is kind of complicated, some other pcvs had been trying to organize a bike-a-thon across the province in collaboration with a local youth activist organization, and although it looks like that project has fallen through, through those contacts we were invited to bike with them on a different outing. there were mixed messages as to the reasons for the ride. everyone who participated was given a t-shirt which comemmorated the "day of youth and sport" or something like that, which was the day after the actual ride. but when we got to nicoadala there was a big event at the secondary school, and i was told that a local group was kicking off a month-long testing campaign. so either way, 3 other pcvs and i (and about 50 other people) biked from quelimane to nicoadala. itºs 37k which is 23 miles according to my cell phone converter, which is almost without a doubt the farthest iºve ever biked. luckily for me itºs all flat, and it wasnºt super hot, and even still i almost died. the group included professional biker guys and a lot of bike taxi drivers, in short people in MUCH better shape than i am, and they were going a bit faster than i would have chosen and not stopping for water as often as i would have liked. to top it off i swear the wind was blowing against us the entire way. a couple of times 2 of the professional biker guys grabbed the back of my bike to push me along to help me rest a bit and catch up with the group, and if it wasnºt for them i might have fallen behind. but i made it! not really dying to do it again any time soon, at least not when i canºt control my pace, but it was something different, nice to be able to appreciate some pretty countryside in a different way, and definitely a feeling of accomplishment!

on another saturday in august i went to participate in the first "feira de saude," or health fair, in quelimane. the purpose of the day was to promote healthy practices, all the local ngos had booths set up with information and were doing various screenings (HIV tests, breast cancer, blood pressure, etc). there were singing groups and skits with themes of non-discrimination, etc. some outstanding community health workers got prizes. all really nice, right? well it would have been, but my day started by meeting the icap car and my peer educators at a point on the other side of town from the fair to hand out t-shirts. thatºs nice, right? peer educators and icap staff were all supposed to get t-shirts that said icap and "feira de saude" and walk together in one happy group to the fair location. except that t-shirts are like gold here. every event, every commemorative day, every organization, etc. makes a t-shirt and they are coveted prizes which people will wear for years, and when i got to the meeting point there was already a full-scale war going on, all 90+ peer educators were in a mob around the icap car scrambling and screaming that they didnºt get a t-shirt, or they wanted a different colored t-shirt, or the person next to them had taken 2, or that another person wasnºt even a peer educator. it was RIDICULOUS, but i should have known, thereºs always a guerra (war) when ANYTHING is being given away, money, t-shirts, food, whatever. i blame the ngo culture for making people believe that they need t-shirts to be taken seriously, or that they have the right to expect something free when an ngo car shows up. but it is still such a spectacle over something that SO isnºt worth it, it always puts me in a bad mood. it is an unfortunate part of my reality here.

to round out my month, towards the end of august my joma group put on a training. the kids who had gone to the nampula conference had really wanted to do a full-on training for the rest of the group, for them to experience well the material that they had learned. so we wrote a grant, got the money, and finally did it this month. theyºre really motivated, smart, organized kids, so i was lucky that i had to do relatively little prep work. i gave them the money to buy supplies, and a little guidance, and they ran with it. they did a 7-day training (their choice). 5 afternoons after school and all day saturday and sunday. i went every afternoon during the week. the first day started pretty late, and i was starting to get annoyed, but i decided that it was their project, and that as long as they accomplished something and they were happy with it, iºd let it be, and it all turned out ok. every day they started more on time and more people showed up and the training went better. they divided up the training into 2 days on leadership, 2 on gender, and 3 on theater, with different people in charge of leading each day. the associationºs president (one of my best peer educators) ended up running a lot of the sessions, and sometimes their leadership styles or management skills werenºt necessarily how i would have preferred, or what i thought was the "best" way to do things, but i let them go with it, and again, every time i thought something wasnºt going well, it ended up ok, and i was really happy with my decision to stay out of most of it (even though they complained) because i think it was much better for them to learn how to do this on their own. as reading my blog will probably indicate, trainings are a major part of the ngo/activist life here, and as these are all smart, dedicated kids many of them are likely to end up working or volunteering in some capacity where knowing how to put on a training will be a very useful skill. anyway, the training had low points (more kids than weºd budgeted for showed up on some days and there were fights over food; some of the kids got into an argument about each othersº behavior and the group was pretty tense as a result) and high points (the peer educator who did a session on gender explained sexual orientation in a way that i thought completely correct and respectful but also sensative to the fact that the ideas are uncomfortable for a lot of people here, making me really proud; the groupºs final theater piece in a local market was really interesting and well-received) but overall i was happy with the way it turned out.

with all that, i still manage to feel unproductive a lot of the time. things like fights over t-shirts and whatnot, lack of attendance and participation in peer educator activities, and inability to get answers to what i see as simple questions because of ngo beurocracy, can get really annoying and disheartening, and certainly contribute to my feeling of uselessness or lack of accomplishment. but as this blog proves, i have been doing something. and iºm taking a 2-week vacation starting next week which iºm SUPER excited about, and which i think will really help me relax and reenergize. and this week i have meetings every day with people to talk about a variety of different potential projects, so iºll have something to work on with all my new energy when i get back.