Letter to Hedlund's Oct 5

Things are going well here and my stomach has finally gotten used to the food with all the local parasites included. I just finished writing my portion of a presentation on consultatiion to mothers on nutrition for their newborn children. My section was on recognizing mal-nutrition, preventing it, how, what types of food, oh, and cheaply, by the way :-) All of it was in French and it took me a while because of that.

Two days ago my group, of which there are 3 volunteers, who live in the same village of Mako, went door to door, (or in this case, courtyard to courtyard) to teach people about AIDS and how to prevent it. Before, we met with a few locals and taught them about AIDS, which in turn we told they needed to do the teaching during the "door to door." We then went to 5 different courtyards with about 40 people each, gathered up all the people and divided them into 3 groups: men, women and kids. AIDS along with sex is a pretty touchy subject, so dividing the groups was good. Also, the women tend to be pretty quiet when the groups are mixed. Some of the cortiers were really happy to have us. They listened and asked questions, but the tough ones were when the women asked "How do we refuse visits from our husband when we'll get beaten or thrown out?" How do you answer this woman? She could get AIDS from her husband who habitually sleeps with several other women, and die OR she could refuse him. In the process, get beaten, raped anyway and/or tossed out of her home and left to die anyway. The solution isn't as evident as it seems because women don't have a lot of the same rights we would expect out of this situation.

I felt good about doing the work and hopefully preventing AIDS in some cases, but when reality hits and the culture is unwilling to agree with the solution, it's like banging your head on a wall. Good thing I have a hard head!!;-)

A lot of the better training we do involves forcing us to do things with the communities we're staying in. The door-to-door project is one example. Another is a class we gave the community on how to prevent contracting Malaria, which is like the common cold here in the regularity that people get it. The next one we're doing is about AIDS and we're working with a local theater troupe which will put on a couple of skits that discuss the facts about AIDS and preventing it. Sounds dry, but these guys are really funny, so it should be a big hit for the village. Wish us luck!

Love
Laura

NOTE: Laura included a digital photo disk, so I'll try to post some pictures as soon as I can!