Yes the bad cliche is necessary here

Some things sound like a really good idea, like necessary and worthwhile endeavors. Then you show up faced with a room of over a hundred loud, smart ass teens and you wonder how you could be stupid enough to think this was a solid plan and give a silent prayer it will be over quick and painless- like ripping off a band aid.


For me this exercise was going to do health talks at the local schools grades 5-9 for world AIDS day. It seemed like a good idea at the time until I realized I was dealing with a bunch of rude and crude (thank goodness I couldn’t understand a word they were saying but my helper seemed a bit shocked by some of the things coming out of their mouths).

What I’ve found is that while these kids have had the word condom drilled into their brains, they have no concept of fidelity and abstinence. After coming up with condoms as a preventative measure against AIDS they would take a few moments to come up with fidelity. Sadly they couldn’t explain exactly what fidelity meant and much to my anger and chagrin the male teachers explaining this in Bambara always used the example of the woman being unfaithful. I understand men are allowed to have 4 wives but damn man if you aren’t married to her a man is just as guilty of infidelity in the cultural sense as a woman can be. This propagation of the stereotype of women being whores while men were innocent made me so angry its just a good thing I didn’t go after them with my hammer (more about the hammer later).

The third mode of prevention was also the last to be brought up: abstinence. Coming from America, this is always numero uno but here it’s not even a topic of discussion. Some students never even thought of being abstinence. The angry group of 9th graders yelled at their teacher that sex was their right how could anyone support abstinence and I kid you not but he agreed they did have a right to have promiscuous sex, a given right, but they had to be responsible. (I think I’ve just found an explanation for the high rate of unwanted pregnancy in my village.) Then when I presented them with the question of what is the only sure way you won’t contract HIV? They said everything but abstinence and when I gave them the answer all hell broke loose. It just goes to show how our social conditioning trains us to think of things.

In fact the idea of HIV/AIDS is far fetched to them. It’s considered a false notion and want to debate it’s not real because it was created in a lab in the United States. There were students in every class who clearly resented my wasting their time by talking about something that in their eyes “wasn’t real”. As angry as these naysayers made me they made my Malian counterpart even more unhinged and I had to keep him from totally going off on the kids.

Whether they believe me or not, believe in HIV or not at least they have a little more knowledge with which to protect themselves from STDs and unwanted pregnancy. They all know how to use a condom and where to find them. Call me mean but I made one boy and girl from the older grades demonstrate how to use a condom after showing them the correct way first. Call me mean but it was funny to watch these kids gather up their courage and do the demonstration. Especially since a boy always volunteered first and we had to volunteer a girl but once they got to the demo it was the boy who was to embarrassed to speak up while the girl gave a good demonstration. I was worried at first about this whole exercise because I didn’t have a wooden penis and bananas were hard to come by but I’m not a resourceful PCV for nothing. I used my hammer.  (I can make so many dirty jokes right here but please feel free to send me what you come up with).

Anyway . . .
So I guess you could say I hammered the message home.  I just hope it stays there.

P.S. If you have someone give you a great “opening statement” for a presentation and you aren’t sure about the language you are speaking in please check first. I didn’t and when I realized what I had said to these kids when I first started my talk, I realized what an idiot I sounded like to begin with.- My brothers, my sisters I have a message for you- ugh!