Some food for thought on Thanksgiving Day

Hey everyone,

I hope Thanksgiving Day finds everyone well and that you all manage to spend a little time with the people you love. I sure wish that I could have the three F's in my life right about now -- family, friends and football. But I'm happy to settle for some nsima, which is what I eat every day, and my new Grassroot Soccer family.

I just wanted to write a quick entry to share some of the latest research in the world of HIV/AIDS. All the information is coming from the Kaiser Family Foundation, one of the leading researchers of HIV/AIDS and other global health problems in the world. KFF is an American non-profit that does a lot of good work all over the world and I love reading all of their most recent updates.

Here are two links to the latest stats and figures for the global HIV epidemic. The first link is a general stat sheet that covers HIV all over the world while the second link focuses exclusively on Africa's relationship with the HIV/AIDS virus.

1. World

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3030-14.pdf

2. Africa

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7391-08.pdf

In case you don't have time to look through the two links I'll share some of the facts that I find the most interesting.

A) 67% of people living with HIV/AIDS live in Africa (that's 22.4 million people). 70% of new HIV/AIDS infections take place in Africa, and 70% of all HIV/AIDS related deaths occur in Africa. There are mind blowing percentages when you consider that there are currently 33.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS and Africa only accounts for 12% of the world's population.

B) The Adult HIV/AIDS prevelance rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is 5.2%.

Sorry to give you guys such a sombre Thanksgiving post but I think it's important to think about things that this while your giving thanks for whatever your giving thanks for.

Before I sign off, I will finish with a really important quote from the KFF:

"The latest country estimates from UNAIDS and WHO indicate that in most sub-Saharan African countries, HIV/AIDS prevalence has stabilized, although often at high levels. In addition, some countries have even begun to experience declines. Finally, there is evidence of reduced risk behavior in some parts of the region. Most countries in sub-Saharan

Africa have developed national responses to HIV/AIDS through National AIDS Commissions, legislation, programs, and services"

There is hope after all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

315 people tested at our 3rd and final testing event!

Sorry for the delay in between posts, November has been a busy month for GRS in Malawi. Things are finally starting to settle down now that you lucky people in the States are getting ready to chow down on some Turkey.

Rachel and I hosted our third and final half-day VCT testing tournament this past Saturday in the Kawale district of Lilongwe and the event was a huge success. The final numbers on the day were as follows – 315 people tested, 9 people were found to be reactive and of those 9 only 2 of them were over the age of 18. I have a couple of notes about the day as a whole:

· The number 315 is absolutely phenomenal. In our previous two events we managed to test 120 people and 220 people respectively so to beat our previous high by almost 100 is a great achievement. The fact that we’re improving on our numbers by right around 100 people from one event to the other is making the GRS Malawi team recognize the limitless potential of these half-day events. With continued improvement we’re hoping that one day we can try to test 500 or even 1000 people at these half-day events.

· The final budget for the day ended up being around 270 dollars. With the help of Baylor Hospital here in Lilongwe we’ve managed to cut pretty much every single unnecessary expense so that we can focus our money on things that will make us more efficient. The fact that we’re testing over one person per dollar that we’re spending is a pretty cool stat; especially when you consider that the standard budgets for testing events in Southern Africa can go as high as two or three thousand bucks while testing right around the same number as us.

· The thing that amazed me most about the event was how smooth and hassle free it was. At the previous two events we had major problems that came out of nowhere at the last second, for example in Area 25 one of the teams didn’t show up and in Area 36 four of the teams showed up two hours late. We had a few unexpected hiccups at Kawale but for the most part we dealt with them quickly and didn’t let them disturb our rhythm at all. We avoided one major catastrophe when Mother Nature decided to be kind and hold off on the rain until the end of our event. At one point it started to drizzle a little bit and I totally froze. I knew that if it started pouring everything would have been ruined – the kids would have run home, the PA system guys would have packed up shop and the counselors would have gone home as well. I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible it would have been if it had started raining. For one thing, we probably wouldn’t have tested 50 people and all of the 270 bucks that we spent would have gone to waste.

· One of the toughest parts of the day was when this 18-year-old kid came up to me and told me that he had just tested positive for HIV/AIDS. I tried to support him as much as possible and raise his spirits but the worst part was that he didn’t believe the outcome of the test. He kept saying that he didn’t believe the doctors but when I asked him why he couldn’t come up with one good reason not to believe them. I tried my hardest to tell him that he had to visit the Baylor clinic in the next week to follow up the positive result and consult with one of the clinicians at the hospital but he seemed very hesitant and almost hostile. After a while we managed to calm him down and we booked him in for an appointment this week but for a little while that was kind of a scary moment. I think his reaction to the positive result was a product of two things: 1) I think he was scared and part of the HIV/AIDS culture here is to run away from things that scare you. 2) I also think that this was a classic case of HIV/AIDS stigma. The kid didn’t want to believe that the positive test was real because he didn’t want to accept that HIV/AIDS was a real problem. Either way, as long as he goes to his appointment and sticks to his ARV’s he’ll be ok but we definitely need to keep an eye on him.

· I don’t want to finish on such a somber note so just before I conclude my post I’m going to talk about one of the coolest things about the Kawale event -- the presence of the local community Chiefs. In Kawale, and actually in a lot of Malawian communities, the Chiefs are the most influential people in the area. We extended invitations to all 12 Chiefs in the Kawale area and we were all extremely surprised to see all 12 of them show up on the day of the event. These Chiefs were undoubtedly one of the main reasons we managed to boost our number to 315. Their presence inspired kids, mothers, fathers, and absolutely everyone around to come out to our event and test. The best part of the whole Chief experience is that some of them actually agreed to test. We were by no means expecting them to agree to test and we were ok with that, we thought their participation would be enough of a help to our event. In fact, some of them almost declined our invitations because they were worried that we would force them to test. But in the end, after they saw what we were doing for the kids and how fun everything was some of them actually agreed to go into the testing room. The fact that they not only showed up to the event but actually participated in the testing aspect was a huge help to GRS in Malawi and a testament to their wisdom as Chiefs. Hopefully we can continue to build a working relationship with them because their power is unparalleled in Malawian culture.

All in all the day was a huge success and I’m really happy because it means that I can start my 3-week journey home on a high note. Starting on Friday Rachel and I are planning a nice long trip from Lilongwe to Cape Town through Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia. We’re planning a couple of fun activities along the way – some of these fun activities include bungee jumping from Victoria Falls, sand dune surfing in Namibia, visiting a sweet safari park in Botswana and white water rafting down the Zambezi. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes if I survive and I’ll take as many pictures as possible.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you wherever you are in the world!

Great coverage of GRS Malawi in the Press

Hey Guys,

Just wanted to write a quick update with two important things.

1) In the last week, all of the major Malawian media organizations have been sending requests to interview Grassroot Soccer about the record breaking number of HIV tests at the two events that we hosted in Area 36 and Area 25 last week. The two biggest newspapers in the country have covered the events and all sorts of important people have been congratulating us on our huge numbers. Apparently the 615 people that we tested last Sunday is a record number of tests in one day in the history of HIV/AIDS in Malawi -- pretty awesome news.

One of my jobs in the past week was to write an article/press release to detail the success of our events. The Grassroot Soccer website posted it on the main website today, so I'll include the link if you want to check it out (if I were you I would check it out, not to read the article but to look at the picture from the event). Here is the link to the article on the GRS site:

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/2009/11/03/arecordnumberofhivtestsinmalawi/

And if you don't want to look at the link, I'll copy and paste the article from the site here:

GRS Malawi saw unprecedented success during the weekend of October 23-25, 2009, through two community HIV testing events in Lilongwe. On the 23rd of October, through a half-day Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) tournament combining soccer, GRS activities, and HIV testing, GRS Malawi tested 215 people. Two days later, the GRS team, in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine/Abbott Fund Centre of Excellence, tested another 610 people during an impressive community sensitization event with over 4,000 people in attendance. Testing a total of 825 Malawians in one weekend, GRS Malawi is making great strides to fight the pervasive stigma and fear that deter people from learning their status. David Jones, Vice President of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative, stated, “there has not been a larger single HIV sensitization event organized in the country ever, or more people tested at a public event in one day.”

The following is a first hand account of the weekend written by Eren Munir, a Grassroot Soccer intern in Malawi:

After weeks of preparations, the weekend set to begin at noon on Friday, October 23rd, with a half-day VCT, and end at 4 pm on Sunday, October 25th, with a community-wide sensitization event, was finally here. Charged with the ambitious task of completing two separate testing events in two distinctly different areas of Lilongwe, Malawi in just 52 hours, we were unsure what a realistic goal for the events would be, but decided that testing 300 people, between the two, was reasonable.

Having tested 115 people at a similar half-day VCT tournament three weeks earlier, we hoped to test 100 people during Friday’s tournament. By incorporating soccer and HIV education into a positive environment around testing, however, we were able to provide counseling and testing services for 215 people, surpassing our goal while spending only $235 for the entire event! The cost-effectiveness of our model, which capitalizes on the power of soccer to encourage people to test, is inspiring. With one success behind us, we prepared for Sunday’s sensitization event, unsure of what to expect from an event we had never run before.

The sensitization event was even less predictable, and with church attendance a common Sunday activity in Lilongwe, we wondered if we would be able to draw a significant crowd. On our side, however, was the presence of Mafunyeta, one of Malawi’s most popular musicians. Early in the afternoon, with over a thousand people in the audience, we anticipated testing 200 people. But as the golden Malawian sun beat relentlessly on our backs, and the day wore on, suddenly, people began streaming in by the hundreds. Soon, the crowd had tripled, and over 4000 people gathered for the music, performances, and HIV education presented by GRS and Baylor’s Tingathe and PMTCT Outreach Programs. The sea of people before us was a powerful sight and at the end of the day, the news that 610 people had tested during the event was overwhelming. Bringing the total number of people tested to almost three times our initial predictions, the GRS team felt proud of and inspired by the community’s collective action in the face of an epidemic that claims the lives of more than 60,000 Malawians every year.

2) The second piece of news is that we’ve had to push back our next VCT event by 2 weeks. We were supposed to have our third and final VCT event in the Kawale district of Lilongwe this Friday (the 6^th) but because of a massive overhaul in the academic schedule, our plans have been completely changed.

Basically, the Malawian Government decided yesterday to completely switch the academic calendar by moving the Christmas holiday for each government school and by shortening the vacation time by 4 weeks. Can you imagine how upset you would be if you were a student and your vacation time was completely ruined???

The new academic calendar certainly makes things a little more difficult for us but we’re still going to try to have our even in Kawale before the break starts at the end of November. I’ll keep you updated as I know more.

800 people in 3 days

I learned one very important lesson over the past couple of weeks: update my blog more frequently! I’m not even going to pretend like I’m up to the task of reporting each event that has unfolded since the last time I checked in, but I’m here to tell you that I’m going to do my best. I figured for the sake of space and time, it would be far easier to break the past three weeks into a series of highlights and lowlights (hopefully more highlights than lowlights).

Highlights

· Number 1 definitely has to be about the immensely successful VCT event that we held in the Area 36 district of Lilongwe this past Friday, the 23^rd of October. This event was essentially planned the same exact way as the Area 25 event that we hosted about a month ago. We had 8 teams of about 15 kids aged between 16-18. Each one of these kids got the opportunity to play in our soccer tournament, engage in GRS HIV education activities, and learn their status by testing for HIV/AIDS. This event was a huge success because we managed to test around 220 kids, close to 100 more than our event in Area 25. Seeing an increase of 100 people tested was very gratifying for Rachel and I, especially when you consider the amount of obstacles that we had to overcome to ensure that the event was a success (I can spend a whole blog entry talking about obstacles themselves but I fear they may bore you).

· One side note about the event we had in Area 36 – the whole thing cost only 235 dollars! That means we essentially spent one dollar per person that we tested – this is amazing when you consider all of the different costs involved. We have to rent a loud PA system to attract people, we have to pay our coaches/peer evaluators, we have to feed them and the children and we have to provide water, testing supplies and stuff for the football fields. I feel weird saying this, but if you donate one dollar to GRS you can help one person find out their status within the context of a Malawian VCT. That feels pretty good to say when you consider how much money it could potentially cost elsewhere!

· Coming in at a close second is the sensitization event that GRS hosted in Area 25 this past Sunday afternoon. The basic idea behind a sensitization event is to make sure that people in and around Lilongwe learn about GRS and the kind of work we do. These events make our work a lot easier in the long run because people are way more willing to work with us if they know who we are and what we do. Sensitization events are so important in the world of HIV/AIDS in Africa because it such a taboo topic, so it is good to get all of the facts out there in order for people to realize that all of the stigma is a waste of time. Sensitization events are particularly important in Malawi because GRS was established here in 2006 so very few people know who we are and what we do. Most sensitization events here are small scale, maybe in a small church or some small room with a handful of people. But GRS and Baylor Hospital decided to absolutely blow this event up by inviting some of the biggest performers in Malawi. There were three musicians who are household names in Malawi, as well as a group of acrobats and actors. Almost all of these performers decided to test, and this in turn encouraged OVER 600 people to test! As you can probably imagine 600 is an insane number for one of these events, so we were all very happy with the work that we did. The performers acting as role models in the testing department definitely helped, but I think the massive number also proves how important HIV/AIDS work is here.

· My closing highlight definitely has to be the number 820. This is the total number of people tested from the two events that we had this weekend.

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I don’t want to spend too much time discussing downers, because it is impossible to ever be too down on yourself when you are in this beautiful and amazing continent – but I will discuss one or two things that got me thinking over the weekend.

Downers

By far the biggest downer was interacting with the people who just found out that they were HIV+. When you test over 800 people in a country where the national average for HIV+ people hovers around 14%, you should expect to meet people who discover their positive status – but this doesn’t make it any easier. I have to admit that I had a hard time talking to the first couple of reactants that I talked to. I mean, what can you possibly say to them to make the situation better? And who am I to talk to them? I would just kind of freeze up and go silent when I should have been trying to make them feel better. Thinking back on it now I feel terrible because I should have done a better job but I think my silence was due to my inexperience. After spending time at a couple of events now, I wouldn’t say that I feel comfortable interacting with people who test positive for HIV right in front of me, but I would definitely say that I feel comfortable enough to not be silent. In my limited experience, I have learnt that it is ok to reassure people moments after they learn about their positive status. At first I thought it wasn’t my place to try to reassure them, I was afraid that it would come across as patronizing. But after thinking about it I realized that these are the people who most desperately need to hear a friendly and reassuring voice.

The only thing that you need to tell them is the following: everything is going to be ok. Just because you tested positive doesn’t mean that your life is over. You can still live a healthy, happy and long life IF you adhere to the ARV medication and make smart decisions about your lifestyle from here on out.

All right, I think I’m done for today. Please let me know if you want to here any more about these events or anything else. I have a bunch of pictures and videos that I cannot upload in this country because the Internet connection is so slow and unstable – but maybe I can get them to you when I come back to the states in December.

We are hosting our last VCT event of the quarter in two weeks, on Friday November 6th in the Kawale district of Lilongwe. We have set an extremely optimistic goal of testing 400 people at this event, and I cannot wait to tackle this challenge.

1st VCT event in Malawi

It’s the day after. I’m sitting here in my unfurnished room in our new house (our 4th home in the last 2 months actually), and all I can think about is yesterday’s VCT event in the Area 25 district of Lilongwe. Voluntary Counseling and Testing events are an integral part of the Grassroot Soccer program because they are one of the most effective ways of combining soccer with HIV counseling/testing. The average VCT event is an all day affair and yesterday our schedule for the kids ran from 12:00 noon until 5:30 in the early evening. Rachel and I were responsible for creating the schedule and basically ensuring that everything ran smoothly throughout the day. As you can probably imagine, events like these are easily derailed so being responsible for everything is easier said than done.

The whole point of the VCT event is to get as many kids tested as possible. Obviously there are a lot of roadblocks to this goal -- many kids don’t want to test because they are scared of their potential result, many parents don’t want their kids to test because they or their partner have HIV/AIDS and they know that their child does too so they don’t want them to find out, or because the majority just don’t want to because it’s easier not to test. This is where the soccer comes in. When we set up the tournament and start communicating our program with the school, we make it very clear that the only way kids are going to be able to participate in the tournament is if they agree to test as well. So for instance, all 96 kids who participated in our tournament yesterday received counseling for HIV/AIDS and then tested. In my opinion, VCT events are the best way to prove the incredible power that soccer has in the world of HIV/AIDS. 90% of these kids would never have tested if we just showed up there with a bunch of doctors and offered free tests. But by promising soccer as an incentive, we were able to attract a huge number of kids to our counseling/testing services.

In an effort to hype up this event as much as possible, Rachel and I decided to build a relationship with one of the professional soccer teams in Malawi – CIVO United. They are one of the perennial powerhouses in the Malawian Premier League so everyone in the country supports them and all of the kids love their players. Only in Africa would you be able to just go to the stadium of an elite professional sports team during one of their practices and organize a meeting with the players and coaches within minutes of walking into the grounds. Can you imagine just walking into Fenway Park and organizing a meeting with Terry Francona, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia and Jason Bay? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But that’s essentially what we did with CIVO United, and from the first second we started talking to the guys they were all 100% behind our message and our agenda. Rachel and I were both wholeheartedly amazed and touched by the players and their willingness to help us for free. After the meeting we got the names of the players who wanted to participate in our event in Area 25 and we started planning ways in which they would be able to assist us as much as possible. When the meeting ended, we were expecting only one or two guys maximum to come up and offer their services so you can imagine our shock when basically the whole team said that they wanted to join us.

Unfortunately it would have been difficult to effectively incorporate all 25 of the CIVO players, so we decided to take three and we promised that everyone of them would have the opportunity to volunteer for us at a future event. After everything was said and done, we had the luxury of picking the team captain and three of the best players on the team. And after thinking about it for a while, Rachel and I decided that they would be most effectively incorporated in the event as one of the coaches for the teams during the tournament. So out of the 8 teams, 4 four of them were being coached by widely known and admired soccer celebrities. You can imagine how excited all of these kids were.

The appeal of having these soccer guys as coaches goes further than just soccer. All of these players are huge role models for the kids, so obviously they are going to have an effect on them in an athletic sense. But what we really wanted to capitalize on was their ability to encourage kids to test. Think about the difference between me, some random muzungu (white person in the local dialect), asking them to test and then one of their favorite soccer players asking them to test. If I was a kid growing up in Boston I probably wouldn’t have too much time for some random volunteer telling me to do things, but if Tom Brady asked me to do something…anything…I would do it. That’s the thought process we had going into the day, and ultimately it panned out better than we expected.

From previous experience in using African soccer starts to help the testing aspect, GRS had become accustomed to the fact that these players would not want to test. Maybe they would strongly encourage the kids to test, but there was no way that they would test. In the grand scheme of things, it is very difficult to get men to test for HIV/AIDS and it is even more difficult to get young, established men to test. Rachel and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that the CIVO guys probably wouldn’t test. But when they got to the event all they could talk about was how much they wanted to test, and how much they wanted to tell their kids that they were testing so that the kids knew that that their role models were testing. I would have a hard time telling you how much of an impact this had on the kids, and how much of a difference in made in our testing numbers for the day. All I can say is that we were expecting to test around 60 kids when everything was said and done, but at the end of the day we had over 100 kids tested – a huge difference in the world of VCT events. Hands down one of my favorite moments from the day was when one of the CIVO players got tested and came running to find me to show me the prick on his finger to prove that he had been tested. He was so excited that he had been tested, you could tell that it was something that he was unsure about at first, but so excited about when he was finished. Moments later he called his wife to tell him that he had tested and that he knew his status. Just a really cool moment.

All in all the whole day was a huge success. We managed to have everything kicked off by 12:30 and everything wrapped up by 5:30, no small feat in Africa where the idea of keeping time is more or less meaningless. When everything was finished, each team had been given a chance to test, go through two GRS educational activities about HIV/AIDS stigma and discrimination and play three soccer games. The winners of the soccer tournament received cool Grassroot Soccer t-shirts and also the team with the best attitude with the testing and GRS activities part of the day won t-shirts. Believe me, when 80% of the kids playing had one shoe or less, these t-shirts were also a huge huge draw for the event.

Honestly, I feel like depending on when I decided to write my account on this hugely successful event I would probably focus on a different aspect of the day. So many different things had a huge impact on me and I took so much from the experience that it’s hard to try to capture it with words. By far, the most intense moment of the day was when I learned about the testing numbers and how many positive tests came up during the course of the day. I don’t want to throw around any numbers because the tests haven’t been officially compiled yet, but I know for a fact that there was a decent number of positive results. I found this piece of information out in the car on my way home from the event. I remember feeling so happy and encouraged with everything right before I heard the number, and immediately afterwards all of my positive feelings were crushed. At that point, all I could think about was the kids who received positive tests and how much their life was going to change from that moment onwards. Hearing the number made everything more real for me. Up until that moment, I was just having fun organizing the soccer tournament, working with the CIVO United players, and enjoying the day. I didn’t have much involvement with the testing because I wasn’t a certified HIV/AIDS counselor or tester. But when I heard the reports from the counselors, I realized how important our VCT events could be. I realized that it’s not about the soccer; it’s about what the soccer could potentially help us achieve in the world of HIV/AIDS.

Street Skillz at Teen Club

This blog entry is coming on the heels of a wonderfully relaxing long weekend in Lilongwe. Pretty much everyone in Malawi had the day off on Monday to celebrate the end of Ramadan – so I was able to relax a little bit after a fantastic Teen Club session on Saturday. It was only the second Teen Club I’ve ever attended but I already felt a lot more comfortable during the event. I actually felt like I was helping the kids this time, which is a huge turnaround from the last time when everything going on was a little dizzying. For all of you guys who don’t remember what Teen Club is, its basically a once a month event where Baylor Hospital in Malawi hosts about 100 HIV+ kids. The purpose of the event is to check up on each one of these kids on a regular basis to ensure that they are adhering to their ARV medication and that everything else is going well. But ultimately Teen Club is also an opportunity for HIV+ kids to meet other HIV+ kids and make new friends.

The Teen Club session this past Saturday was especially exciting because the GRS Malawi team decided to pilot the first ever “Street Skillz” session in this country. “Street Skillz” is a brand new GRS program that essentially combines playing soccer with HIV/AIDS education during the course of a soccer tournament. So during the day, kids will alternate between playing soccer games and then doing GRS activities like find the ball and my supporters (these are all activities that are designed to start discussions about the massive amounts of stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS). The soccer games themselves are special because GRS decided to inject a whole set of innovative rules that ensure that the game is about more than just soccer. So an example of some of the rules that we used during Saturday’s games include:

· A goal scored by a girl counts as double.

· Everyone on the pitch has to score after every goal, even if it means cheering for your opponent.

· Each team has to come up with a special team name and cheer. The team should perform this cheer before the game, after the game and after every goal.

· Players on the field are responsible for calling their own fouls.

Each one of the rules is designed to encourage the kids to be responsible, communicative, honest, and fair. The rules are also designed to involve girls as much as possible. GRS is actively trying to increase female participation in soccer and other sports. One of the most striking statistics that I’ve heard since I’ve been here is this one: FIFA estimates that less than 1% of the world’s 260 million soccer players are female. And all the Research has shown that female participation in sport improves school performance, reduces rates of unwanted pregnancies & STI and delays sexual debut. So involving girls in soccer and other sports is just one more way to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

All in all the day was a huge success. The main reason we decided to pilot “Street Skillz” in Teen Club is because we were having a hard time finding an engaging activity for the older kids in the program. In the past, Teen Club in Malawi has had a lot of problems with problematic/disinterested 17 year olds who end up distracting the younger kids. So we thought that by using “Street Skillz” we would simultaneously engage the older kids and also create a less distracting environment for the younger kids who come. The idea ended up working out really well because the older kids felt special and privileged when they were allowed to play soccer, these feelings made them more willing to engage in the activities and have fun. During the planning process, a lot of people were worried that playing soccer with a group of HIV+ kids would be too risky and dangerous considering the health of each child. I don’t need to tell you how fragile each kid on ARVs is, and obviously one bad fall etc. would be potentially disastrous to them. Fortunately no one got injured and everyone came out of the day happy and healthy.

Between Rachel and I, we ended taking around 200 pictures of the kids during our “Street Skillz” session at Teen Club. I can’t tell you how hard I’ve been working to upload them onto this blog, but my Internet connection in Malawi is about as insecure as it gets so I’ve been having a lot of problems. Each time I try to upload a picture it estimates that it will take about 48 hours to successfully upload. As much as I love you guys I promise you that I don’t love you that much. It’s really a shame that you guys can’t see these pictures though because they are awesome. The first time I saw them I looked through all 200 of them four or five times because they made me so happy.

All of the pictures are amazing because in each one you can see how incredibly happy the kids are to be outside playing soccer. You can tell in each kid’s face that they feel normal and that they love the feeling. It’s really touching to think about because when you see these kids you know that they probably don’t have the chance to feel/act like normal kids very often. For a wide variety of reasons like stigma and discrimination most of these kids never have the opportunity to go outside and play soccer with the other kids in their village. So it felt really good providing these kids with the right environment to play and have fun. Hopefully I’ll get the pictures up soon, that way you can see first hand how happy the kids look. They’re all hugging after every goal, high fiving each other, dancing and smiling after every goal – it was truly an awesome thing to see. The more I think about it, the more I realize how important Teen Club is to these kids. Obviously Teen Club is important to them because it is where they get there month’s supplies of ARVs and where they get seen by doctors. But beyond that it is also important because it provides kids with a real chance to feel normal and be with kids who are similar to them. After I saw these kids leaving the soccer pitch on Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t help shaking the feeling that as soon as they left the field they were going to be thrown into this world where they were back to being “different” and “social outcasts”. As depressing as this feeling was, it also encouraged me to work extra and do my part to ensure that each session is as fun and fulfilling as possible. If these kids only get one chance and month to be normal, we better make sure that each session is as awesome as possible.

Over the course of the last four weeks, I’ve heard a lot of really unbelievable myths that surround the HIV/AIDS issue in South Africa and Malawi. I thought I would share some of these myths with you so that I can give you an idea of the challenges that we’re facing.

HIV/AIDS was created in a laboratory in the United States:

The belief is that Americans created the virus, and then came over to Africa to infect as many Africans as possible. As a result, many locals are suspicious of any westerners looking to come into their village for HIV testing.

If you become infected with HIV, you can get rid of the infection by having sex with someone else:

This is known as the “hot potato” myth. The idea here is that by having sex with someone else you are passing the virus onto someone else. Some people don’t realize that the virus will stay with you, and potentially infect your new partner if you decide to have sex. This myth seems to be a variation of the “have sex with a virgin” myth that seems to be more prevalent in South Africa. Both myths are obviously dangerous because they are encouraging HIV+ people to engage in as much sexual activity as possible.

If you pray, you will never get HIV/AIDS:

This myth presupposes that if you are a good Christian, or a good Muslim, you will never get HIV/AIDS. This myth is particularly dangerous because it makes people believe that as long as they pray, they are immune to the virus.

HIV/AIDS can be found inside many condoms, so if you use protection you have a higher chance of getting the virus:

This myth is just one more roadblock in the movement to get as many people to use protection as possible. It’s hard enough to encourage condom use in many of these areas because of religious or traditional problems, so this myth is the last thing that we need. This myth also corresponds with the first myth, because some people believe that it was the Americans who put the virus in the condom.

Jacob Zuma’s many HIV/AIDS myths:

In December 2005, Jacob Zuma, the current President of South Africa and the then head of the National AIDS council, was accused of raping an HIV+ woman. According to reports from the trial, Zuma was aware that this woman was HIV+ but he still decided to have unprotected sex with her. When asked why he did this, Zuma responded by saying: 1) He wasn’t worried about contracting HIV because women cannot give the virus to men. Only men can give the virus to men. 2) He wasn’t worried about contracting the virus because he took a shower immediately after sexual intercourse. Can you imagine the impact that these words had on the South African population? Because of this man’s words and actions, millions of people (and especially men) thought it was ok to have unprotected sex with HIV+ women as long as they took a shower afterwards. Keep in mind that this message was coming from the head of the National AIDS Council! This is the type of event that sets the HIV education movement back several years.

As you can see, there are many HIV/AIDS related myths that make our work here more difficult than it should be. These myths really prove to me how important HIV education can be though, because if we can move around and go around to as many communities as possible we can potentially dispel as many of these myths as possible.

In talking with many of our coaches, it seems like they have to deal with many of these myths on a regular basis. Many of them said that they spent more time than they would like to think about telling people that they should not believe these HIV/AIDS myths. Hopefully, by reaching as many different sites as possible we’ll be able to fight these myths and show people how much more effective it can be to learn HIV facts.

You may be surprised to hear this, but there are actually many more myths related to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Many of them are more directly relevant to stigma and discrimination (for instance, if you touch someone with HIV then you will contract the virus etc). If you want to hear any more about these common myths then hit me up at emunir@grassrootsoccer.org and we’ll talk about it.

Hope everyone is doing well. Been hearing a lot from people who are reading up on my adventures, so thanks for the support and hopefully we’ll continue to stay in touch. I’ve been trying to upload pictures for the past week but my Internet connection is too slow/insecure…but I’ll keep trying!

Door-to-Door Testing

So it’s almost the end of week number three in Malawi and I think I’m finally starting to develop some semblance of a routine here. As you can probably imagine, it took me a little while to adjust to everything out here but now that I know a little bit about my surroundings I’m feeling great. Every day I eat at this delicious little tin shack called “Chez Sharif’s” which is run by the eccentric Indian/Malawian man and his wife. I’ve had lunch here every day since I’ve been here, a meal is approximately one dollar and it consists of a full chicken breast, a huge portion of rice, some salad, some cabbage, some green beans and a piece of Chapati (which is like Kenya’s form of Naan bread). Pretty good deal if you ask me. Of course you got the occasional pebble in your plate but this minor inconvenience is more than compensated for by the quality of the food and the price. I’m going to take a picture of Sharif and his wife soon and post it here so that you guys can meet him; he is one of a kind. My name around here is now “two thumbs up” because after my first meal at his restaurant he asked me how it was and I said “two thumbs up”. He had never heard the expression, and now he loves it. He calls me “two thumbs up” at least three or four times each meal.

Enough about Sharif though, onto the work I’ve been doing in my third week in Malawi. On Monday, Rachel and I had the honor of being invited to join some of our coaches in the Kawale district to help them with one of their door-to-door testing events. During these events, an HIV counselor accompanies a coach as they walk around their communities asking everyone if they want to get tested for HIV. Without much access to transport, this is the closest our program can come to service on wheels. Initially Rachel and I were convinced that we wouldn’t be allowed to participate in this activity because of confidentiality rules and other technicalities. But after really pushing for it, and talking it over with several American doctors and of course our local coaches, everyone decided that it would be fine for us to join them. As you can probably imagine, Rachel and I were initially pretty nervous and felt very out of place. But after we were welcomed into our first home all of this anxiety was dispelled by the hospitality of our Malawian hosts. I had fun going through all of the introductions for a couple of minutes, went through all of the embarrassment and humiliation as people slowly realized that I couldn’t speak a lick of Chichewa (local dialect). After all this was done, Rachel and I watched our coach and the counselor go to work. They explained the importance of the test, why it should be performed, and how it was done. They also explained what kind of actions would be taken if one of the tests turned back positive. This is when the reality of what was unfolding in front of my eyes hit me. For a little while, I think I forgot why we were there and I just started having fun meeting these new people. But as soon as the tests started I become terrified – what if it turns out that one of these kids discovers that he/she is positive right in front of my eyes? This wouldn’t be all that unlikely considering the national HIV prevalence in Malawi is around 13% and in some areas it is as high as 25%. What would I do if that happened? What would the child do? All of a sudden I became fixated on knowing the child’s status, all I could think about was how terrible it would have been if it turned out positive. Fortunately, all of the tests we took were negative – something which is fairly rare apparently. The rollecroaster of emotions that I felt through the whole process acted as a jolt to my system and ultimately made everything I'm doing here much more tangible.

I heard a lot about Baylor’s dependence on door-to-door testing before I got here so it was a real honor to be given the opportunity to participate. Apparently many people in the HIV field have hailed Baylor in Malawi for its door-to-door innovation – and now I can see why. It’s amazing because it reaches out to a percentage of the community that may never have tested otherwise. Many people cannot go to local clinics to get tested for a number of reasons: 1) they can’t afford transport. 2) they just aren’t aware that testing is available and free. 3) they are worried about the potential stigma if they are seen going to the HIV clinic to get tested. By going to people’s houses within the community, we are really targeting a group that may never have been tested otherwise – which you have to admit is probably one of the biggest aims that HIV testing has in Africa. All in all the whole experience was incredible for me, and I was happy to hear that being white and being in attendance may have actually helped the testing. At the first house we went to, we were supposed to test one GRS participant, a 12-year-old boy named Victor. After going to visit his house, and being introduced to the whole household and the neighbors and their neighbors we managed to convince 15 people to get tested. The whole thing took a long time but in the end it was worth it, because 15 more people got tested.

The one thing that really stood out for me as I went home after the event was the lack of male participation in the event. All 15 people that we tested were either females or little boys. We saw three men in the house and all three declined to get tested for whatever reason – which is kind of troubling. In training we learned all about “multiple concurrent partners” which is said to be one of the biggest contributing factors to the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. This is when young men and women decide to engage in multiple sexual relationships at the same time. As you can probably guess, in a conservative culture like the one in Malawi the vast majority of the time it is the male who decides to have multiple partners at once. While Rachel and I were sitting in Victor’s house, I kept thinking about how important it was for the men to test. Obviously I was happy to see all 15 women and children turn out negative tests, but I was also frustrated because I knew that all this meant nothing if the husband decided to get another girlfriend who was HIV+. If this happens, he would then potentially infect his wife, any newborn children, and maybe even anyone else in the household. After this experience, Rachel and I decided to think of ideas to get men more involved in our program so this is one of our major projects now.

Alright, I’m going to sign off now but I’ll try to write again this weekend. I’m working at my first general testing event on Saturday from 8 am until whatever time in the afternoon. There is going to be soccer, music and fun times all around. We managed to convince a player from the Malawian professional soccer league to attend so the children should be excited. I’ll take pictures.

Welcome to Malawi! My New Home

I just finished my first week in Malawi and I’m really excited about how much I learned in such a short amount of time. I’m based at the Baylor Center for Medical Excellence in Llongwe, Malawi – it is a hospital that specializes in pediatric HIV care and it is affiliated with Baylor School of Medicine in Houston, TX. It is the best HIV caregiver for children in Malawi and ever since 2006 it has been affiliated with GrassRoot Soccer. This is an exciting partnership for GRS because it gives us the opportunity to reach more children and get more testing done by using the established “Baylor” name in Malawi. Everyone around here knows Baylor very well, many because the hospital has saved someone in their community or family, so people are very open to GRS when we say we’re working with Baylor. I’m especially excited to be working with Baylor because it gives me the opportunity to see the medical side of HIV care firsthand. By working and spending time with all of these doctors who are so passionate about pediatric HIV care I think I’ll be able to learn so much more about the whole process.

The Baylor program is also amazing, and exciting for GRS, because it has many innovative ways of thinking of testing and treating HIV patients. For instance, Baylor has initiated this “door to door” testing method that actively goes and seeks out new patients to test for HIV. This has been extremely helpful because many local families do not have the resources to travel to distant locations to test, they also are sometimes scared to be seen at a clinic for stigma reasons or they are just too intimidated by the possible positive result to go out and test. Baylor has found that going door to door around communities has encouraged more and more people to test. The great thing about the door-to-door testing is that Baylor has allocated a certain number of HIV counselors; some are actually GRS coaches as well, to follow up on any patients who have come up with a positive test. This way the patients can be told about the importance of adhering to a regular schedule of ARV’s. I’m really excited to learn about this whole process, and hopefully see how effective it is in person one day.

Last Saturday, I got the opportunity to participate in Baylor’s “Teen Club” program. This is a program that runs every three weeks for children who have already been exposed to the HIV virus. The program gives HIV positive children the opportunity to rally together and spend time in a strong support group. This is important because most of the rest of the community may discriminate against them for being HIV positive. By spending time in this environment the children learn a lot about themselves and actually end up having a lot of fun with their new friends. The program is also supposed to help the children recognize the importance of adherence to their medication (for ARV’s to be successful the adherence rate needs to be over 95%). This is where GRS comes in – our GRS coaches direct many of the activities run during Teen Club. These coaches are recognized role models to the kids in the communities, and therefore when they discuss the importance of taking ARV’s the kids listen up. Watching the coaches work with these children was amazing. The coaches are such an inspiration for the work that they do -- they have absolutely no reason to wake up at 7 am on a Saturday to help with events like Teen Club, yet they come back every week for the sole purpose of helping these children. Because of these coaches, Teen Club runs smoothly and all of the under-appreciated HIV positive children in attendance have the time of their lives doing the GRS activities.

As much fun as the event was, I have to admit that it was also very hard at times. After spending so much time learning about the HIV virus and what happens to HIV positive kids over the course of our training with GRS, it was pretty overwhelming to actually meet an HIV positive kid for the first time. I remember just looking at the first kid I saw and feeling this numbing sense of sadness for him. The chances are the kid did nothing to contract HIV, we learned that 95% of the kids in attendance at Teen Club became HIV positive through their mother at birth or because they were raped as a child – knowing this and then spending time with the kids might have been the hardest part of the whole process. After a while, I realized that there were many reasons to be happy about the whole day. The kids may be suffering and in pain from the ARV’s, but Teen Club gives them the opportunity to spend time with other children with HIV and appreciate the fact that they still have a life to live. One of the worst stigmas with HIV is that your life ends as soon as you contract the virus. Maybe back in the day before the birth of free ARV’s this was true, but nowadays children can live a full life if they adhere to a regular schedule of taking their meds and their bodies stay strong. Ultimately it was impossible to stay sad for too long when you saw how happy the kids were. Pretty much all of them were laughing, talking and joking around – once again proving that they are a million times stronger then I could ever be. Next time I’ll be sure to take some pictures and share them on this blog, it really is a cool day.

This weekend I’m going to Lake Malawi with my two housemates and some other people who I don’t really know yet. Should be a good time, if you have any free time go to Google and type “Lake Malawi” into the images section, pretty impressive.

Cape Town

Hi everybody, I wanted to share this post a couple of days ago but the internet has been pretty poor recently so I'm finally ready to share it now. I'm in Malawi now so be ready to check in soon with my updates from my new home!

Its already been two weeks since I left Boston for Cape Town and in these two weeks I’ve seen a wide range of scenarios that have really left a deep impression on me. For one, the city of Cape Town itself is amazing. I would say that it really isn’t much different from most American or Western cities insofar as it offers a lot of high-end entertainment/food/hotels etc. There were many moments in my Cape Town visit where I really felt like I was in some amazingly beautiful tropical location like Barbados or something. My six months in Senegal last year conditioned me to think of Africa in an entirely different way, and I think the reason for that is the unique nature of Cape Town and South Africa in general. As far as I can see South Africa is split between the extremely rich and the devastatingly poor, and this disparity is particularly relevant to big cities like Cape Town and Johannesburg. On the one hand you have some of the wealthiest people on the planet enjoying 5 star everything and on the other hand you have some of the poorest living conditions in any society anywhere in the world.

I was struck by this disparity more than ever yesterday when GrassRoot Soccer took all of us interns to the largest “township” community in Cape Town. The township is called Kayalitcha and it houses just over a million people from all over South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa – migrants looking for a taste of the inordinate amount of wealth that exists in some parts of Cape Town. Most if not all of the Kayalitcha residents live in a 6 by 6 shack made partly of wood and partly of tin. Each shack is forced to welcome 8 or 9 people each night, with everyone scattered on the floor trying to find whatever warmth or comfort they can. As you can probably imagine, the conditions in these shacks are unspeakably inadequate and against any sort of human rights questions that you may have. Running water is hard to find, with most families being forced to walk across the vast township to simply fill up a bucket for their family. There is no electricity in these shacks and the majority of the toilets are made up of shallow man made holes in the yard – these holes are too shallow to hold too much human waste but unfortunately most families have no alternative so they are forced to deal with whatever diseases and viruses that these outhouses may carry with them. The more I learned about these townships and the more I saw, the more I kept asking myself

How can anyone live in a place like this? How can anyone be happy in a place like this?

And the answer, unsurprisingly for most of you, is that more and more people are deciding not to live in these conditions. Crime rates and suicide rates have skyrocketed in the past couple of years, ultimately making Kayalitcha one of the most dangerous communities in the world. One of the men I met in this community told me the most amazing story which I’ll share with you all – this man was an ex convict and a major criminal in Cape Town. From the age of 5 he carried a gun and was involved in armed robberies. He had been arrested three times, all for armed robbery counts and after the third arrest he made the decision to change his way of life (something that most criminals around here do not realize until its too late). Today, this man, is a respected member of the community. He just started a tour guide business that enables him and his friends to show tourists around Kayalitcha, which in turn allows tourists like myself to get a glimmer into the township way of life. It also allows him and his friends to make a living outside of crime and do something productive for the community. He was a truly amazing man and thinking about his life after he told me his story while watching him play around with smiling township children was a really jarring experience.

Shortly after this eye opening experience, GrassRoot Soccer decided to take whoever was interested for a brief shopping mall on the waterfront in Cape Town. Many of us, myself included, were leaving the following day for our various placements so the mall trip group was big. Most of us just needed adaptor plugs, an extra sweater, some books or other simple things that might be more expensive in Malawi or Kimbereley, South Africa. Ultimately it was hard to find these things in this particular mall because everything inside was too high class for the simple things that we were looking for. This mall had LaCoste, J. Crew, Polo Ralph Lauren and Woolworths but they had nowhere to find cheap books or simple sweaters. This mall would put any mall you’ve ever seen in the states to complete shame. In addition to all of the high-end stores, the mall was full of incredibly gourmet and expensive restaurants. Even the bathrooms were gorgeous, which is not something you say everyday.

As I was walking through this mall with my new GRS friends, I couldn’t help thinking back on the conditions I saw in Kayalitcha. I spent the rest of the night trying to reconcile the two Cape Town communities and to be quite honest I haven’t found a reasonable explanation in my head, maybe I never will. The American equivalent to this situation in Cape Town would be if David Beckham’s mansion were next door to the homeless shelter in South Central LA – total poverty living next to disgustingly gluttonous wealth. To close, I’ll mention a brief conversation I had with one of the US embassy members, an American who had been living in Cape Town since the end of Apartheid. I brought up all these issues with him during our conversation and ultimately he ended by saying that he could not believe that these township inhabitents had not started a total rebellion against the wealthy Cape Town residents. He was saying that if he lived in Kaylitcha, he would have a hard time believing that he wouldn’t resort to crime, protest or rebellion in some way – what other option does he have?

I also wanted to take advantage of this internet session to post "Lusaka Sunrise" -- this was a video made by a former Grassroot Soccer intern and it's supposed to encapsulate the GRS mission pretty succinctly and effectively. It takes place in the capitol of Zambia, Lusaka, and it stars a lot of Grassroot Soccer staff members.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyplef2Hi6Y

Landed Safely!

My seemingly never-ending journey from Boston to Cape Town finally came to a close this morning. The past two days have been incredibly intense -- 7 hour flight from Boston to London, followed by a 12 hour layover in London, followed by a 12 hour flight to Cape Town -- but as soon as I got in the taxi destined for our temporary hotels I knew that all the travelling was worth it. The 15 minute drive from the airport to the hotel reminded me of all of the different aspects of South Africa that made it such an appealing destination for me. On the one hand you had these beautiful mountains (Table Top mountain, Lion's Head mountain and Devil's Peak mountain -- all three are one day hikes, something I will definitely be doing at some point over the next 12 months), then you had this incredibly gorgeous ocean and then in the middle of it all was Cape Town. A beautiful city. But at the same time, it was hard to ignore the masses upon masses of shacks alongside the road that made up a part of Cape Town's township area. These houses are inhabited almost exclusively by black South Africans and other immigrants who live in absolute poverty. The shacks seem to be made out of a mixture of tin, metal and whatever they can find to patch up all of the windows/ceilings. The whole thing was a pretty immediate reminder of the type of poverty that exists in this otherwise amazing city.

Obviously I don't know much about the city now, but I'm really looking forward to hearing as many details as possible and maybe visiting some time soon.

Not sure when I'll have the internet next but make sure to write me emails and check out this blog!

Hey Everybody,

Welcome to my blog. I'm going to be using this forum to share all the details of my life over the course of the next year with Grassroot Soccer in Africa. This website will also hopefully provide me with an effective way of keeping in touch with everyone who reads it.

As I'm writing this, I'm about 48 hours from the beginning of my journey. Trying to finish, or in all honestly start, all my packing. Also trying to say goodbye to all my family and friends before I head off into the Africa sunset -- definitely the hardest part of this whole process is saying goodbye to everyone. Fortunately, I'm able to balance the hard goodbyes with this feeling of incredibly genuine excitement for what my life might be over the next 12 months.

Alright well this post was just a quick hello so I'm going to get back to packing and I look forward to keeping in touch with everyone as much as possible over the next year.