Fun and Games

I have just made a hasty retreat from my Sunday morning walk; I was feeling as though the sun was unusually hot for this time in the morning and as I turned my head I was somehow not surprised to see thick black clouds charging over the hills to my right, so less than 15 mins in I was forced to turn tail and return home prematurely to my breakfast of pineapple, banana and yogurt. This has become my Sunday ritual (not the retreating part!) and is a lovely break from yoga and porridge of weekdays; I go into town on Saturdays and pick up the yogurt (ikiviguto) from any of the restaurants which has it, they decant it from a massive vat into my empty water bottle, the lack of fridge at my house means that it is always a little fizzy by now and tends to explode on opening but it is delicious nonetheless.

It has been a tiring week but overall a successful one I feel. Many a stressful phonecall preceded the events of this week which was a training for young people in peer education and how to be good facilitators, as they will be supporting the schools in the district with the weekly activities in Anti AIDS Clubs. It had not been an easy task hunting down 8 people between 21 and 28 willing to work as a volunteer and with no other work commitments to the extent that at 5am on Tuesday morning I was still tracking people down, but somehow by the end of the first day of the training I did indeed have 8 young people from Nyagatare and Ellie had her 16 for Ngoma District. The training took place in Kibungo, the heart of Ngoma District, so I travelled down on Monday with my facilitators and the two trainers who have worked with us for a year and who were to conduct the training.

Day one we were hit by some slightly worrying pre-test results, which demonstrated relatively low levels of knowledge among some of the participants and over the week we were faced with some interesting ideas, such as the fact that women can lose their virginity by playing sports. These moments lead me into fits of panic (ah these guys are going into schools to inform school children and this is what they think?!) but fortunately they were fleeting as everyone seemed to embrace the training, getting involved in debates and games. Sticking to the agenda was nigh on impossible and in typical European style this brought me out in cold sweats, but somehow most things were covered and despite the constant singing and dancing (which showed total disregard for our warm ups but we did squash HIV with our dancing feet apparently) and the insistence on forming a committee (very popular here) who had lots of reporting duties, we got there in the end. And when it came to the young people running some sessions themselves it was really brilliant to see them following the manual we had provided, enjoying conducting the activities for themselves, and doing some really fantastic and energetic sessions.

There is a long way to go before I can be totally confident that all of the clubs will be well catered for by committed facilitators who attend regularly, and the follow-up is likely to be an arduous task requiring the utmost from my (limited) organisation skills, but it is great to have a new team of young people equipped to begin informing others. So onto the next challenge, will they be accepted by the schools? And in the immediate future will I be able to pull together an event for World AIDS Day by Friday?!?! It seems unlikely but I will let you know…