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.