Yes, Kill them All

(not sure what happened last time but hopefully it actually posts this time) There I was at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in the pooring rain, covered in mud and my feet covered in blisters which my chocos continued to rub raw, but I couldn't remove my sandals as I was walking down the railroad tracks which are full of very sharp rocks. The bottoms of my feet were also covered in little cuts and had a thorn or two embedded in them. I knew my friends were around somewhere but they had passed me up ages ago, I was struggling behind, bringing up the rear. Though you would think I was in a miserable frame of mind I actually was feeling great about the way things were going. I felt like we were finally making some progress.

We were just finishing up a week of HIV/AIDS sensitizations in Anivorano. The week was bombarded with problems. My friend and fellow PCV, Anwar, who had helped me plan this event had just been diagnosed with active Tuberculosis and was in a two-week quarantine in a hospital in Tana. It had been raining for weeks and did not stop, thus the roads were in horrid shape. The condoms that we had gotten from Peace Corps for doing demonstrations and for passing out were all expired. The woman I asked to help out as a guide turned out to be a bit of a jerk. But despite all the troubles it turned out to be a fun and successful week.

I had invited five of my friends to come out to Anivorano for a week and help me give presentations in all the different villages and hamlets about HIV/AIDS. We split into two groups to be able to cover all seven administrative districts of Anivorano. We walked an average of 15 kilometers a day, sometimes in mud and some days on the railroad tracks. While we would frequently show up to a village to find that they were not expecting us we were quickly able to attract an attentive and enthusiastic crowd. Over the 4 days that we worked we spoke with almost 400 people, many of whom didn't even have the most basic information on HIV/AIDS.

We had a number of gaffs due to our still imperfect language skills. Two of my favorite came up in one presentation that Elizabeth and I were doing in a small village called Moka. We had spent four hours walking to this place; we were hungry and exhausted but excited about the opportunity to talk with these villagers. Who had gotten nearly to the end of the presentation and were taking questions. One older gentleman asked, "Well wouldn't it be a good idea for us to kill all the people who got HIV/AIDS? Then they could not transmit it" not really paying attention to the question Elizabeth responded "yes that is an excellent idea, we don't want to transmit HIV/AIDS" my jaw dropped and I gasped "Liz you just told that man that we should kill everyone with AIDS" we quickly backpedaled and did our best to discourage this idea, killing everyone with AIDS is a horrible idea. We reinforced the idea that if someone has HIV/AIDS and knows it they can take precautions to not spread the virus and still lead a long and productive life. This is the point where I chimed in and continued to encourage people to use condoms. One woman asked me "can condoms cure diseases?" and I responded "yes condoms CURE ALL diseases" Liz caught me on this one and I also quickly backpedaled, apologized for my mistake and clarified that condoms protect us from some diseases but cure none. As we stumbled away from Moka we couldn't help laughing at the ridicules things we had said and hoping that we had done a good job correcting ourselves, I can imagine nothing more horrible than the people in Moka continuing to think that it is a good idea to kill people with AIDS or trying to use condoms to cure any number of diseases.

The second to last day we all went to Sandraka together, where we encountered a room full of men smoking weed and playing the keyboard while they waited for us. It ended up being one of the more interesting presentations we gave as the village elders were all high, but that just added to the fun. At the end of the presentation they decided that they wanted to show their appreciation, we were all really hoping that they would invite us to lunch as we were starving, all our cookies were gone and we still had a 9 km return hike. But no, instead of offering us lunch they brought out a kilo plus of uncooked rice and gave it to us. It was an extremely nice of them to give us a gift but the last thing I wanted to do was carry all that raw rice back to Anivorano. I would have much rather put it in my stomach. There were multiple times on that trek back down the railroad tracks that I contemplated ditching the rice, but I just couldn't do it there are too many people in this country who lack in rice for me to go throwing it out just because my feet hurt and I don't want to carry it anymore. It ended up making a delicious dinner.

While there were challenges we were satisfied with the week and happy with the work we had done. Unfortunately one of the things that this week of HIV/AIDS sensitizations really brought to light was how much work remains to be done.