Successs!

Dec 1 is World HIV/AIDS day. I had planned activities for that day in the center of town, all of which flopped, (due to a variety of things like I had a conference and was out of town the week before, my co-leader in the health center lost her father that week, and it took 2 months for the mayor’s office to even receive my letter asking for help, let alone responding to it) so I was a little disappointed. The next day I traveled out to a rural community where I have a small, but active youth group. We´d planned a presentation in the park for 2.30 pm. (Of course that really means 3.30)
So we got set up and waited and waited, and no one came. We had maybe 5 mothers and their kids, and I´m not really sure that I wanted to give condom demonstrations to 5 year olds, not really umm... pertinent yet. So we decided to start anyway. By the end of the day we had over 100 people show up. The doctora who works in the health center came by and saved me from my terrible Spanish and helped explain how HIV works, the difference between HIV and AIDS. In my site we have 16 cases of HIV in all the communities, and have had 4 deaths this year. My part of the country has over 1000 cases, and the country as a whole has well over (I think) 8000 cases. Those numbers I think were an eye opener the town’s people. After the little presentation we had maybe an hour of games and prizes (thanks to an NGO in Managua that donated the hat, towels, condoms, etc etc). The girls and I did condom demonstrations to over 100 people, I thought it would be more embarrassing, but I learned quickly how to laugh at myself.



This was a game where we tied balloons to people feet, and they had to stomp them. When a balloon was popped the person was supposed to answer an HIV/AIDS question, but that didn’t quite work out.



Here we had a competition of two pairs to see who could put the most water in their condom. This activity is designed to demonstrate how much condoms can stretch. A commonly heard complaint against condom use is that ¨they don´t stretch enough to fit¨.



The little town’s cultural alliance performed some traditional dance for the group, and we ended the day with a dance competition.



I finally feel like my projects are working out, yesterday was a huge morale booster that was well needed.