At the request of my friends who are much more technologically savvy than me, I have recreated this blog on Blogger: http://gracesadventuresinafrica.blogspot.com/ Something about linking and feeds, I don’t know. I just do what I’m told. I am excited about the ability of that blog to host comments, though, so if you’d like to comment, you can do it on that blog! It’s the same blog entries, so don’t feel like you have to bookmark both. I will probably also continue that blog after this internship is over. Now, the real stuff:
As my time in Lesotho comes to a close, I’ve realized that I haven’t blogged in two weeks. Sorry about that. This will probably be my last entry in Lesotho, so I’ll do my best to make it entertaining and pithy. Here goes nothing.
HIV testing
All three groups who are here in Lesotho have taken a different approach to HIV testing and education, which has been an interesting social experiment to watch. I’d like to add my experiences so that others can compare.
At the end of one of my most memorable conversations with a group of my students which started as casual conversation but morphed into a discussion on racism, then to xenophobia, then to humanitarian outreaches to crises, then to HIV/AIDS, I tentatively asked my students if they were willing to get tested for HIV, expecting a reaction somewhere between wariness and fear. Instead I was faced with fifteen students nearly jumping out of their chairs with anticipation. Slightly shocked and mentally filing this experience in my memory under the heading “Cultural DIsparities 101” I assured my students that I would try to arrange something before we left the country.
That evening I asked Bill Bicknell who I should contact about HIV testing. Bill has become one of my best mentors in Lesotho. He is an M.D. and professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health and currently is head of LeBoHA (Lesotho Boston Health Alliance, the word leboha means “thanks” in Sesotho) and works with the Ministry of Health to improve the health system through management. Pretty much a baller. He told me that I should call one of the HIV clinics he set up at the Lesotho College of Education and that they would get my class tested.
Robby and I each took half the class, one Thursday and one Friday, and we did group counseling and then did the testing individually. The woman taught us how to read the tests so that your results were completely private. 24 out of 26 of my students tested those two days; I was very proud of them. Although the counseling was done in Sesotho and I couldn’t follow most of it, the nurse occasionally lapsed into English and I picked up on the tone of her counseling. She talked to the students about how they owed it to themselves and owed it to their families so that they could take care of each other. It was definitely a different approach than I took when the two who were unsure asked me about it, but I appreciated this woman’s ability to speak to my students in their cultural language about the importance of testing for HIV. When the two who were hesitant asked me what I thought, I told them that I knew it was scary, but the fear of not knowing is too much to deal with everyday. If you’re negative, great. If you’re positive, you have to face a whole set of challenges, but at least you know and you don’t have to be scared every day by the possibility. I left them by saying that it was their choice and although I wanted them to test, they were not obligated to do anything.
Getting the testing done was important, but Jane Hale’s words of wisdom always echo in my head, “It’s not a problem until they make it one.” In other words, I could say “Bakhotsi, we’re getting HIV tested because it’s important,” but that wouldn’t produce any lasting change in them. Testing was great, but discussing the impact of HIV on teenage sexual activity, in my opinion, was the more important accomplishment. Through the discussions about how they feel about sex and HIV, my students have realized how the AIDS epidemic directly affects them. As much as I wanted to just say, “Statistically, 1 in 3 of you has HIV and there are no ARVs to speak of available to you,” that wouldn’t have meant anything to them. It didn’t mean anything to me when I was 16.
Over the past five weeks, my students and I have had at least three roundtable conversations about sex. I have encouraged them to ask questions and share their opinions. It has been the most rewarding experience to finally be a role model for a group of scared teenagers faced with new peer pressures of sex, alcohol, and drugs. I’ve watched their faces as they realize the magnitude of the problems they face as teenagers and as Africans. If you know, bakhotsi, that your elders tell you not to have sex until you’re married, and that unprotected sex will give you HIV, but people are doing it anyways, what do you do?
My students knew the basics. HIV is a virus that is transmitted through certain bodily fluids – semen, breast milk, blood – and cannot be cured, and AIDS is the disease that eventually weakens your immune system to the point that other diseases invade and kill you (most notably in Lesotho, tuberculosis). What they didn’t know were questions like these that they posed to the group – When are you supposed to start having sex? If my friends are having sex at 14, what should I do? Can I leave my girlfriend if she won’t have sex with me? How does drinking and smoking change sex? Is it okay for girls to allow their boyfriends to sleep around? How do you ask your partner to wear a condom?
I made HIV their problem. Through a discussion in which I listened 80% of the time, my students helped each other get to the realization that sex is real, HIV/AIDS is real and will be a problem for them, and the answers are not as easy as our parents pretend they are.
Cultural prejudices and poverty
Lauren Kraus and I have been puzzling over Basotho culture. Now that we’ve been here for over a month, we’re starting to understand the deeper, darker strains of Basotho culture that are such an impediment to real growth in this country. This vastly oversimplifies the problem, but if Basotho people are not willing to take an active role in developing their country, why are Lauren and I here? Thoroughly confused and wanting the perspective of my honest Basotho students, I posed this question to my class while talking about the business climate in Lesotho. Quickly, they reiterated the standard stereotypes of their own people that I have come to expect out of nearly any Basotho, regardless of age, education level, or home town:
- Basotho are jealous
- Basotho are lazy
- There are no jobs and not enough education in Lesotho
- White people are more trustworthy and need to develop Lesotho because Basotho can’t/won’t
Just work with me on this. I know you can psychologize the institutionalized inferiority complex and point to many different reasons for why people feel this way in addition to saying that these are stereotypes and not necessarily realities, but I want to know how these impressions affect my student’s life dreams. I’ve asked many of them if they will return to Lesotho after they attend university (and I’ve made it abundantly clear that they are expected to go to university) and they all answer with a resounding “no” accompanied by a reason like “There are no jobs here,” or, “If I start a successful business, my friends will get jealous and kill me.”
Oh. So if you’re black and successful in this country, your countrymen kill you? Again oversimplified, but the short answer is yes (although intimidation and property destruction is more likely than actual death). This sentiment strikes me as the heart of why development is floundering so badly in Lesotho. Again, I’m not really concerned at this moment about whether or not jealous murders occur in Lesotho (although I would not be surprised) but that the impression exists and is strong enough to discourage the next generation of doctors, lawyers, statesmen, and business owners from returning to their home and providing the badly needed investment that will break this cycle.
Strangely, I couldn’t coax out of my students the idea that improving yourself was preferable to than bringing your enemy down. They readily acknowledged that it isn’t right to burn your neighbor’s store, but couldn’t think of an alternative like competition. I’m a novice discussion facilitator, so you’ll have to excuse me when I said I broke at this point and just started talking and trying to explain how I use my jealousy to make myself better rather than destroy my neighbor. They were amenable to that idea, and quickly saw how it was a better alternative.
I’ve found that these students are typically not given responsibility, but they cherish any opportunity to show their trustworthiness and responsibility. They safeguard my computer like a lioness with her cubs if I leave it with them to watch a movie, voluntarily sweep the floor of the class room and arrange the chairs, and follow through on an action that they promise they will do for me. The students were extremely proud to carry the cash that Robby gave them at the high school to the testing center where I met them, and they took care of paying the bill for the testing supplies before I realized it needed to be paid.
Today, I seized on this opportunity. After we discussed the futility of the status quo in Lesotho right now – Western countries giving aid to a corrupt government and the few educated people leaving Lesotho because of a lack of jobs – I laid the burden of responsibility for Lesotho’s future at their feet. I said, “It is the hardest to be your generation. Everyone before you left Lesotho and didn’t come back. No one has had to become adults in the face of an unprecedented pandemic. But to make Lesotho a developed country, someone has to make the hard choice to come back. Y’all need to come back to your country with the business skills from university and build a business that employs people fairly and makes the economy stronger. You have an obligation, as educated people, to educate other Basotho about how to make themselves better rather than tearing down others.”
Molise, my favorite student, looked up at me cautiously after that and said, “So, you think we can teach others?” And I said, “Yes, you can. Have you heard the parable, ‘Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime’? You have the business skills to help business owners have a more successful business. You can teach them what you know to improve Lesotho’s economy.” With that, they all looked at me with bright, smiling and hopeful smiles. “We can do that!” they said.
Then I almost cried from happiness. This is how you fight poverty – by making it their problem and inspiring them to fix it themselves with the skills that they have.
Pithy, yes. Entertaining, no. I guess that means that I’ll have to post once more, something entertaining, before I leave.
For those of you who were wondering about the Long Walk to Shelve-dom, I’m proud to say it was a success. The workers showed up at the threat of public humiliation, but still endured the shame of walking into the Center past small children holding signs and chanting “We Want Shelves” Props to Lauren for being awesome. After the work was finished, the children turned their artistic skills on two beautiful thank you cards saying, “Thank you for our shelves!” Positive reinforcement is a a powerful tool, although possibly a bit confusing after a juvenile picket line a few hours earlier.