Cutting the cake
Coming to Swaziland, a main goal for Elizabeth and I is to implement our projects. Our other job is to help around the clinic, picking up secondary projects that we can do. One of our main side-project that we just finished this past weekend was the teen club. Pioneered by the Baylor clinic in Botswana, the club provides a great venue for HIV positive adolescents to live positively and to become not only educated about their condition but also empowered leaders who can direct their community to a new HIV movement. The teen club in Swaziland meets once a month; about a hundred kids arrive early in the morning, some at the door as early as 7’o clock. In addition to the sessions that begin late in the morning, the teens have a chance to see the doctors and have their pill refills so that they do not have to miss school. Swaziland has a strict discipline about school attendance. I meet a mother whose boy received beatings from the teacher for being late despite his having the PAC doctor’s legitimate note excusing the boy. The boy’s appointment time was changed to the teen club.
Elizabeth and I created a curriculum that included topics from sexual development and reproduction to contraceptives and positive prevention. We were lucky we could compile a lot of activities that would reinforce our messages; we drew upon the advice of past BTB interns in Lesotho, the head of the Botswana teen club and one of Elizabeth’s friends who had worked on family planning extensively. Even though we only had time to cover sexual development, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the teens and I feel that it was an amazing success. The social worker who leads the teen club will continue the rest our curriculum in the future.
It was intimidating to watch about 60 kids slowly filling the classroom, but I knew it was going to be a good day when they remembered my name after being introduced once—I can’t even achieve that if the name wasn’t mine. The teens were a lively bunch whose energy and attentiveness to our activities took them beyond our expectations from the very beginning. Our first activity was a sort of icebreaker to crack the sex taboo by asking groups of teens to write down synonyms/slang words for various sensitive sexual terms we gave them. It was wonderful to see the kids huddling together, giggling over words such as “butt” or “sex”, but also whispering about what to write. I stumbled a bit when a girl approached me and asked what an orgasm was; I like to think that I gave an honest answer. I think the fun atmosphere the activity established really allowed the teens to become more involved in the lessons. They were actively participating in the discussion afterwards, sharing some intense slang from the expression of our translator and deciding collaboratively as a group which words were appropriate to use in the classroom. Of the many outrageous slangs they shared, I learned that sex can be referred to as “cutting the cake”.
As we progressed through the lecture, it seemed that the teens were familiar with the physical changes relating to puberty, but they had misconstrued notions about the anatomy and physiology of sexual development. When we asked them to draw the male and female reproductive organs without using references, they were unfortunately far off target. For female, they drew a baby inside a woman and for male, the penis. I was very glad we covered the anatomy because it really clarified and illustrated some of the background knowledge they needed to understand reproduction. We discussed extensively the menstrual cycle; there was a prevalent a belief in the classroom that the bleeding is from the egg exploding. Questions came from around the room, but I was surprised to notice that the guys predominately asked the questions about the female reproductive system. The girls may possibly be shy, but they did actively participate in the activities.
Overall, I was very impressed that all the kids were attentive to the lecture, not only to the games but to the slides. I felt that the teen club really acts as an open outlet for the kids to embrace their status, confront their questions and uncertainties and most of all, to be themselves. They did seem afraid to share their opinions or to ask questions and even sought the doctors’ opinion on the political issue of HIV branding. Apparently, a man running for office in the Ministry of Health thinks that he can gain popularity by being open about the HIV issue. For a man who hasn’t himself been tested, he proposes that all HIV positive patients should have a HIV brand on their gluteal region so that HIV status can be openly known between partners.
Teen clubs is one of the best experiences I have had in Swaziland. With these kids’ enthusiasm, the HIV situation in Swaziland may not be so dark in the near future.
On a small side note, I also enjoy the reading time Elizabeth and I had with the kids in the waiting area. Each of us would have a circle of very cute, overly eager, slobbering kids who we would read to while they fight for position in our lap. The kids sometimes have to wait quite awhile for their appointments, so I am very glad that we can at least entertain them for an hour each day.