The good life

Whoa, it's been awhile.  Things have been a little hectic, to say the least.  I've been back and forth to America and organized and run a workshop since I've last posted.  But, since getting back, and actually starting to see some of my efforts come to fruition, I've realized my days here are numbered, which has inspired me to start recording my adventures again, at least for memories sake.

To start:  What the hell is Mpilonhle?!  I realized in my last couple posts, especially the one about the initiation ceremony and circumcision, that I have never really explained my organization and what they do.  I have explained what I do for them a little bit in the beginning, but that doesn't really explain who we are or what we do.  Ok, here goes...

Mpilonhle (pronounced mm (like the sound) - pee- lon - shle (kinda lispy) ) means "good life" in Zulu.  The foundation of our organization is mobile health units that circulate between 12 rural high schools, so servicing upwards of 10,000 adolescents, providing health education, computer education, and HIV testing and counseling.  Our counseling entails a 45 minute one-on-one session between a learner (aka student) and a counselor, where the learner is screened for everything from malnutrition to TB to abuse, and then offered rapid HIV testing.  I am pretty proud of this being as many children in America don't get a 45 minute health screening annually.  Now if anything raises a red flag during the screening, the team includes a psychologist/social worker and nurse to further manage the concerns.  Due to confidentiality concerns (aka anyone who goes to see the psychologist/social worker and/or nurse has a problem), we have every learner go through the process of seeing the nurse and/or social worker so no one can be singled out.

All health education and IT education is grade appropriate and progressive.  Since we come back to the same schools year after year and see the same kids, we build on what we taught them the previous year.  So, it's not the same information over and over again, but we continuously build on their knowledge base.  We've also found that coming back year after year offering HIV tests has normalized the idea of getting tested, getting rid of stigma, so more and more kids test each year.

Now, the ideas behind it.  Adolescents, no matter where in the world you are talking about, are an incredibly vulnerable group.  This holds true even more here, in this rural, impoverished area.  There is also a transition we see here, from primary school, where no one is getting HIV, to 50% of women between 20-25 years old in this area being HIV+.  Yes, in a large part this is due to them beginning to be sexually active.  And a big part of our organization is acknowledging this fact, rather than denying it, like many people do here.  But, they are not just having sex, they are having unsafe sex.  So, our thought is to intervene at this transition point, and hopefully stop it before it starts (or help them know when it starts to help them stop passing it on and remain healthy).

A big asset to our program, in my mind, is that we acknowledge that HIV is a multi-faceted issue.  That it is not simply an issue of sex, as if by teaching safe sex practices and giving out condoms we will solve the problem.  We take a much more holistic approach, providing other services that we have found a need for in the community as well as being related to HIV prevalence.  For example, we provide food parcels, career counseling, shoes (TOMS!), home based health workers, sports fields, gardens for schools, water and sanitation, and as I've talked about in other posts, other health services, including eye care and circumcisions, among other things.  This is where IT training comes in.  Behind HIV, the biggest problem probably facing South Africa is unemployment.  By teaching basic computer skills (we're talking like turning on/off a computer, using the mouse, Microsoft Word, and some other basic office programs), we are hoping to make them stronger candidates for employment.  And unemployment is very closely related to HIV incidence.  If people don't have a job to go to, what is there to do?  Well, have sex.  And for women, a common way to make money when they can't find a better option is prostitution.  So, multiple partners, often unprotected, aka very high rates of HIV.  My project is also related to this holistic/multi-faceted approach to HIV, but we'll get to that another time.  I do have to say that this holistic approach means we are spread pretty thin sometimes, trying to address each and every issue.  But, coming back year after year to the same schools, and approaching the challenge from multiple angles, we hope to create a sustainable and affective intervention.

We also have a strong belief that all of this information and aid should be transmitted from one local to another.  Other than the top bosses (aka Mike and Christine), and us four mulungus at the guest house (and now Claire more and more :) ), the entire organization is African, mostly Zulu.  Who am I to come in as a 25 year old, blonde, American, female and tell these teenagers how to have sex?  Please!  The audience is much more receptive when they can relate to the people providing the services.  It also allows them to speak in Zulu, their native language, which often makes it easier for them to express themselves more freely.  This is especially important when talking to adolescents about sensitive topics because it allows them to use the slang they feel comfortable with and talk about the issues as they hear them, in their conversational language.

Ummm... what else is there to know?

Director: Dr. Bennish aka Mike -> American physician- pediatric ID (infectious disease), working in global health for over 30 years.   Him and his wife (Christine - an adorable Belgian woman) head-up the org, she on the administrative side, as a graduate of the Kennedy school and working in development for decades.

Funders: at least the major ones - PEPFAR, Charlize Theron, South African government through the lottery and IDT,  and of course Grassroot Soccer (aka Tim - should also explain his part at some point) and Ipas (ME! - tomorrow I will explain exactly what that means and what I am doing).

Questions?  Please.  Would be more than happy to answer any questions/expand/clarify.  I'm sure I left something out.  Doing this day in and day out has normalized a lot of this for me, so I don't even realize when I'm leaving stuff out anymore.  Can't wait to hear your responses!