Teen Club

I know I’ve been absolutely terrible about keeping in touch recently but I have a good excuse – work has been insane lately! In addition to organizing two more VCT tournaments next month (first on May 8th and second on May 29th) we’ve been trying to revamp Teen Club and oversee all of the interventions that our coaches have been running in the schools.

Rachel and I have hardly been in the office recently between school visits, meetings with professional Malawian soccer stars and other work related trips. Just this morning we met with two Malawi national team stars and both of them signed up to join our team at the May 8 VCT. I can only imagine how excited the kids are going to be when they see these national superstars coaching their teams!

Apart from all of the work that goes into organizing VCT tournaments, I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Teen Club program at Baylor Hospital. I’m not sure if any of you remember so I’ll briefly describe it again – Teen Club is basically a program that takes place on the 3rd Saturday of every month. The day starts at 8:00 am and it runs until 2:30 pm. During the day, we’ll give the kids enough ARV treatment to last them two months but we also are trying to think of activities to keep them engaged in the day even after they get their medication. My job has been to try and think of fun activities for the kids to do when they’re at Baylor. We’re trying to create a system where half of the activities are fun and the other half involve important key messages about stuff like adherence, stigma and relationships. That way the kids who come will have a lot of fun, but can also take a lot of important information away from the day.

I recently sat down and talked to a couple of the guardians who bring their HIV+ kids to Teen Club and talked to them about what they liked about Teen Club. I’m not sure what I was expecting them to say but their answers absolutely blew me away and made the room awfully dusty. The guardians were basically saying that they loved Teen Club because it was the one place where their kids could be kids. They kept saying that everywhere else their kids were scared to be themselves because of the potential repercussions but at Baylor they could stop worrying and just hang out with kids who understand them.


After being here for nine months and working at Teen Club every month you definitely get a sense for how much the kids enjoy coming to Teen Club. They get all dressed up and jump around when they see their friends for the first time in four weeks. Its pretty amazing to see how excited they get and to see how much they enjoy Teen Club, and the whole thing makes you wonder just how bad things are for them outside of the Baylor grounds. As much as I love Teen Club, sometimes I wish that there was an HIV+ friendly environment that was open every day.


All right, well that’s it for me today. I’m going to do my best to update this blog more regularly. In the meantime I hope everyone is doing well and I really hope that winter is finally starting to go away!

Massive VCT event in Kawale

Man oh man, this is definitely one of those times when I wished that I had updated this guy a couple of weeks ago. So many amazing things have happened since the last time I wrote an entry and I definitely have no idea where to begin. I’ve been thinking about the best way to attack all of the events that have unfolded recently and I’ve decided to do my best to write about each interesting episode in several installments over the next week or so.

I think the first thing that I want to discuss is the half-day VCT event that we hosted this past Saturday (March 20^th) in the Kawale district of Lilongwe. The event itself was absolutely positively the most successful testing tournament that Rachel and I organized since we arrived in Lilongwe. We spent a lot of time planning this event, almost double the amount of time we spent planning all of the other VCT events combined because for some crazy reason we decided to invite four different secondary schools instead of one or two. Our thinking was that if we invited four separate schools, we would sensitize four completely different areas to the joys of a VCT event. We also figured that if we invited four different schools, we would have community members from four different districts in attendance. In the end, this wacky thinking proved to be pretty accurate because in the end we managed to test 483 people in less than 5 hours! Our previous high for a half-day VCT event was 330 people so we were really happy with the final results. The most striking thing about this event was that we managed to test 483 people while still managing to stick to our strict budget of around 300 dollars.

Testing 483 people while only spending 300 bucks is insane and almost completely unheard of in the world of HIV testing in this area. To put things into perspective for you I’ll compare our event to the massive testing event that GRS co-hosted with a couple of months ago. At this event 615 people were tested, which was a record for testing turnout in the history of HIV testing in Malawi, but at the same time this incredibly high budget came with a price tag of over 800 dollars. In addition, the huge turnout was almost definitely a result of the big celebrities in attendance, celebrities like Mafunyeta who is undoubtedly one of the biggest musicians in Southern Africa right now. At our event, we spent 500 bucks less, didn’t have any major celebrities, and did it in 5 hours instead of 10. Pretty mind blowing when you think about it.

Normally I include VCT related posts with the best thing that happened during the day and the worst thing as well. This time I’m going to finish with a story that almost fits into both categories:

At the beginning of the day I met this kid that I had worked with at our previous VCT event in Kawale. When I saw him I talked to him for a little while, asked him how things were going, and then asked him if he was going to test. He kept saying that he didn’t want to test because he was scared. This is a pretty standard response to the question of testing so I didn’t let it stop me and kept persisting and told him that he should test because I’m sure everything would turn out well. After a couple of hours of seeing him around and constantly asking him, he finally got tested. Minutes after he got tested, and before he had gotten his result, he came running up to me saying that he had gotten tested and that everything was ok. He was so excited and pumped that he started telling everyone. Unfortunately, a couple of minutes later I learned from one of our counselors that he had actually tested positive but that they hadn’t told him yet because they couldn’t find him. As soon as I heard the news this huge wave of sadness came over me. I felt like the whole situation was my fault and couldn’t help but feel responsible for all the sadness that he would feel when he learned his positive result. The whole situation rocked my world and I couldn’t stop thinking about it all night.

After thinking about it for so long and talking to a couple of people I realized that it was actually a good thing because now he knew his status and could get treatment and ultimately have a much better shot at living a long, healthy life. Needless to say the whole event made the HIV/AIDS issue even more real for me but I think my final conclusion is that we did a good thing by helping him learn his status. The bottom line is that he has HIV/AIDS, and that he needs to do something to address the virus if he wants to be happier in the long run.

All right, that’s enough from me for today. I’m going to write something about Teen Club in my next entry in a couple of days so stay tuned! Hope everyone is healthy and happy. 

Malaria and the after life

So it turns out malaria is a serious illness. I found this out first hand last week. For the longest time I thought it was nothing more than a more severe version of the flu or something along those lines. In my six months in Senegal, and in my first seven months here in Malawi, I’d been bitten millions of times by mosquitoes but nothing ever come of it until last week. And then all of a sudden everything caught up to me and my luck vanished into thin air. Malaria hit me harder than a punch from Manny Pacquiao and for a little while everything was looking a little grim – but I’m back now and everything is ok. I guess the good news is that I can’t get it again, so now I can let those little bloodsuckers eat me as much as they want without worrying.

I got back to work late last week and was thrown back into it right away. We had a two-day training for our peer health evaluators to help them in their Teen Club duties. A lot of them had been complaining about a couple of things so we decided to put together a training session to help them feel more comfortable and well equipped for Teen Club.

This week Rachel and I have been planning our first half-day VCT since after Christmas break. The tournament is going to be this Saturday and for the first time ever we’re inviting four different schools to participate – that way community members from four separate districts will come and support their schools (and hopefully get tested too!). As you can probably guess, the more schools we invite the more work we have to do to make sure everything is ready for the tournament.  Rachel and I have basically been going from one school to the other to make sure that everything is in place for Saturday. We’ve talked to countless teachers, and embarrassed ourselves in front of four separate school assemblies (where there are between 500 and 800 people normally watching).

Before we started doing these school assemblies to sensitize all of the students before our VCT event, one of our master coaches, Godfrey, encouraged Rachel and I to use our "Malawian" names when introducing ourselves to the students. This may not sound like much but I cannot tell you the reaction of the kids when we pretend that we have Malawian names. All of the kids freak out and start screaming and jumping out of their seats -- "there is no way you can have that name"! Keep in mind these reactions are all in good fun, they just love the idea that we would have Malawian names because it’s completely unheard of for them. The way I see it now is that Rachel and I are complete comic entertainment for all students and teachers in Malawi. We’re there to lighten the mood and make everyone laugh, which is pretty awesome if you ask me.

The next couple of days are going to be pretty hectic and busy, but in a good way. Rachel and I are going to be running around like crazy people making sure everything is in place for the VCT and every afternoon from here until Saturday we’re going to be running practices with the kids to help get them excited for the big tournament. Without us they wouldn’t be able to practice because they don’t have soccer balls or anyone else around to organize them.

On top of all that my parents are coming to visit this Friday! I’m really excited because they’re going to witness one of our tournaments first hand. I haven’t told them the plans yet because I wanted to surprise them, but I’m pretty confident that they’re going to be completely overwhelmed. One second they’re walking off a 3 day flight that completely rocks your internal clock, and the next second they’re walking around a field with about 1000 crazy Malawians kids running and screaming. Should be pretty funny and entertaining, can’t wait!

Buckingham Browne and Nichols Spreading the Halloween love in Malawi

A couple of months ago Buckingham Browne and Nichols (BB&N) where my Mom is in the midst of her 22^nd year as the Lower School French teacher, got in touch with me about an idea they had. The school administrators proposed the idea of sending me some candy so that I could give it to some needy kids in Malawi. My Mom had been sharing my news and updates from Malawi intermittently throughout the year so many of her colleagues knew what I was up to. And went I went home for Christmas in December I actually gave a talk to about one hundred 6^th graders that covered some of my work for Grassroot Soccer in Malawi. So when I heard about BB&N’s desire to help me out in Malawi I instantly signed up to do my part. The kids and teachers that I spent time talking to in January were all fantastic people, and they all shared an interest in learning about Africa so I thought this would be a great fit.

I started having these discussions with my Mom around the end of October, as kids in Cambridge, MA were making there costume preparations for Halloween. Right after we had agreed to do something together, the kids gathered as much candy as they could fit in a big package and sent it off to my address in Malawi. I received the BB&N package around mid-January (ha! 10 weeks for a package! That’s how long it takes in the states as well, right?). As soon as I opened up the package I was really humbled by all the goodies and treats that the American kids had sent to Malawi. In addition to a collection of some of the finest candies that America has to offer, the kids wrote some really sweet cards for the Malawian kids. After talking to some of the GRS peer health evaluators out here, who all work at some local Malawian school, I decided that the best fit for these treats was a local orphanage called OCSR.

A few days after I had decided to give the treats to OCSR I went to donate the goodies with Rachel and the GRS coach who works there, Aaron, by my side. When we arrived at the orphanage there was a whole assembly of seats arranged and all of the kids were waiting impatiently for us. Before we gave them the candy they presented us with a group song and a dance to honor us as special guests. After that we ran a quick GRS activity with them, pressure limbo, a game that highlights the increased risks associated with being a sexually active teenager. Once this activity was finished it came time for me to explain to the kids what Halloween was and then present the goodies to them. Needless to say the kids had almost no idea what I was talking about when it came to Halloween (Costumes? Free candy? White people are nuts!). But when it came time for me to pass the candy around all of the kid’s faces lit up and all of them started smiling uncontrollably. The whole experience for me was really rewarding and I’m doing everything I can to repay BB&N for their kindness and generosity (hint hint, there may be a return package from the Malawian kids coming your way soon!).

Hands down the best highlight of the whole day came at the very end of the meeting when Rachel and I were just about to leave. As we got up to go to the door the kids broke out into a song. The song itself was great and catchy but it became even more powerful when our coach, Aaron, started to translate the words for me. I’ll spare you a word for word account of the song but the chorus of the song basically meant “Thank you for remembering us”. This may not seem like much but it meant an incredible amount to me because I started to think of all the people who have forgotten these unfortunate kids throughout their tough lives. At that moment I learned two things about these kids:

1.     1. How much our visit meant to them and how touched they were by the donations from BB&N.

2.     2. That Halloween was their new favorite holiday! 

Last Graduation!

Just writing to let you guys know that this morning we had our 8^th and final graduation for the second cycle of 2010. The graduation was intended for about 25 kids but almost 500 showed up to watch us dance and make a fool out of ourselves. I was actually the blunt of most jokes after I got up to introduce myself. Before I explain what happened, I want to mention that both Rachel and I have been trying to hard to improve our Chichewa in an effort to communicate more effectively with the kids. So I got up first, all excited about the prospect of introducing myself in Chichewa and said “Muli bwanji, dzina lako ndi Eren”. After I said this all of the kids started laughing, at this point I wasn’t too nervous because I thought all of the kids were just laughing at my dumb (azungu = white person) butchery of their language. They always laugh at me anytime I try to speak Chichewa or try to dance so this wasn’t anything new to me. Unfortunately though, it seems that the kids had more reason to laugh at me than I had realized. Turns out I should have said “Muli bwanji, dzina LAKO ndi Eren”. I guess my first attempt meant “Good afternoon, your name is Eren” instead of “Good afternoon, my name is Eren”. I guess you can’t say I’m not trying…

Anyways, after I got past the embarrassment I managed to take a lot away from our last graduation ceremony. This ceremony took place in Chinsapo, the newest and furthest GRS site in Lilongwe. The fact that Chinsapo was brand new to the GRS program in Malawi, and that it is far away from all of the other sites means that there is a lot of work to be done if we want to make the brand Grassroot Soccer well known in the community. For the most part GRS is fairly well known in and around Lilongwe, but the more you go out of town you find fewer people who have heard of our NGO. So today was a great opportunity to get the word out on what we do and what we’re all about. And I think we did that pretty well (except for my language blunder, which everyone laughed off anyway). The really great news is that the event took place in front of so many people, because now there are 500 more people in the area who know what GRS is and 500 more people who know how important it is to get tested.

Before I sign off I want to share two really cool stories from last Saturday’s graduation in Kawale. The graduation itself was a huge success as we were able to graduate about 150 kids and there were a number of celebrated guests in attendance.

Story #1 – One of our most major guests, the head chief of the Kawale district, attended our event and seemed tired all afternoon. Granted he was a fairly old man, maybe 80 years old or more, but I was still slightly worried that he wasn’t engaged or something. After the event the GRS Malawi team went to go talk to him to thank him for coming and it was during this interaction that he said one of the most touching things I’ve heard since I’ve been here. After we were done saying thank you and all that jazz, the chief turned to us and said “Before I came here I was hungry” (at this point all of us were a bit worried because maybe he was upset that we kept him in a room for four hours but neglected to feed him) but then he continued with “now, I am full”. I guess this is a popular saying in Malawi and basically what it means is that his heart and soul are full of happiness. Turns out the chief was absolutely thrilled by the event and as he left he promised us that he would help us in any way possible in the future – a really great promise when you consider how much power this man has in the community.

Story #2 – One of my favorite traditions in GRS is the coach’s story. This is something that each GRS participant and coach is encouraged to create and master during his/her time with GRS. The story is supposed to be very personal, and it is supposed to explain why he/she decided to join the fight against HIV/AIDS. At the Kawale graduation, one of the children got up to share his coach’s story. At first all of us were a bit skeptical because the kid about the share his story was normally a bit of a goof. But as he got up in front of everyone in attendance something in his demeanor changed – as he readied himself for the story you could see that he was digging deep to reflect on a very challenging time in his life. The story was an incredibly sad one, about how his older brother died of HIV/AIDS. I won’t go into too much detail about the story because its actually quite long (if you want to hear the whole thing email me), but all you have to know is that the story involves an absolutely tragic and unnecessary death -- one that might have been avoided if this kid’s older brother got the chance to learn the GRS curriculum. After he was finished wit the story, he stared out at the audience with tears in his eyes. Everyone who had heard his story couldn’t help but share the tears, and as he went to sit down numerous people went up to him and either hugged him or thanked him for sharing. The kid ended his story by explaining that his brother’s death forced him to join GRS. As I write this blog post half a week later, I still can’t shake the image of this kid getting up to share this powerful story.

ARV treatment in Malawi

When I first got to Malawi I had no idea what ARVs were. To be honest, I’m not ever sure if I’d ever heard the name. But the more time I spend here, and more specifically the more time I spend working at Baylor’s pediatric HIV hospital, the more I realize how important these drugs are for patients suffering from HIV/AIDS.  ARV meds can be the difference between an HIV/AIDS patient living until he’s 80 years old, and an HIV/AIDS patient dying at a very early age because of the disease. Patients who put themselves through regular ARV treatment come across as healthy and happy people. People who don’t have access to this type of treatment can suffer through a slow and painful death.

The whole reason I bring this up is to highlight a piece of news that I just read in the Malawian newspaper this morning. The article informed me that there are currently 250,000 people on regular ARV treatment in Malawi. This may sound like a good number, but when you go digging into the details you’ll realize that this means that only 25% of people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi are receiving the care they need to survive. You see, the population of Malawi is just over 14 million. And many of the most recent estimates about HIV/AIDS in Malawi suggest that the national prevalence rate is somewhere between 12 and 14 percent. This means that even at a very conservative guess, there are over one million people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi today. (A more adventurous guess would put that total much closer to two million, around 1.7 if you want to be exact). But regardless of what the total number is, this much is clear – there is a significant number of Malawians infected with HIV/AIDS who are not receiving access to ARV medication. When you consider that in some countries like Botswana and Namibia the ARV coverage rate is between 70 and 80 percent, you can see that a in a country in Malawi where only 25% of people are covered, there is still a lot of work to do. 

I don't care about your name! I just want to see you dance

In a lot of ways this past week has been the culmination of my first six months in Malawi. Every single one of our sites – Area 36, Area 25, and Kawale – has recently finished their 10-week GRS HIV education curriculum and as a result we’ve been spending the past couple of days graduating all of the newest members of the GRS family.  All of our coaches and all of the kids graduating have put in a ton of work and effort to get to graduation day, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to convey the happiness and joy that fills the room when these kids accept their certificates. Most of the graduation classes put together a poem or a song about GRS to help celebrate the day. I’ve been blown away with the amount of talent and effort that goes into each one of these works of art. I’ve been taking a lot of pictures, and actually a lot of videos too, but as always I won’t be able to post them onto my site because of the terrible Internet here in Malawi. I have a hard enough time posting these blog updates!

Anyways, I’m basically writing this post to talk about two things that I’ve enjoyed the most in the past two weeks:

1)     Dancing – I can’t even count the amount of times that I’ve been forced to dance in front of hundreds and hundreds of people during my graduation ceremony tour. It seems that Malawians are more concerned with seeing an individual’s dancing ability than anything else. At one graduation ceremony yesterday one of the teachers in charge of the program literally said the following to me after I was done introducing myself: “I don’t care about your name! I want to see you dance!”.  After he finished saying those fateful words all of the kids in attendance, close to 1,000 in total, started clapping their hands frantically in eager anticipation of my moves. Needless to say I didn’t disappoint (that is one video I might intentionally be hiding).  The whole dancing thing may seem a little weird at first but when you think about it, it’s pretty awesome. It just shows you how much people around here enjoy life, no matter the circumstances. They could be starving, dying of some disease, in total poverty, but if there is a beat they will dance and enjoy life for as long as they can. I was trying to think about what would happen in the States if one of the teachers started clapping and waiting for everyone to dance and I immediately recognized the fact that almost every single American kid would just sit in his seat and be weirded out by what was happening. In Malawi, the kids are ready to dance and have fun whenever and that makes things a lot more fun for me.

2)     Commitment to GRS – One of the most astounding things I’ve been trying to wrap my head around recently is the level of commitment that these kids show to the fight against HIV/AIDS. As I was sitting through a graduation ceremony yesterday I started asking myself – “Why are these kids even here? Why would they devote so much extra curricular time to our program when there is no tangible benefit to be gained?”. In all honesty I was having hard time finding answers to these questions. I mean, we were putting these kids through an intensive 10-week HIV education program, where they devote hours and hours of time outside of school and giving them no tangible reward.  I was imaging myself at that age and thinking about what I would have done back in the day, and I’m pretty sure I would have avoided any sort of serious extra curricular work at all costs.

But then it hit me – these kids don’t need any monetary or tangible rewards for this education because all they really care about is the knowledge itself. This is a disease that affects almost every single Malawian (I guarantee that everyone in the graduation room knew at least one person touched by HIV/AIDS). These kids just want revenge. They want to learn about what has been attacking them and their communities so that they can one-day defeat it. To sit back and watch the level of commitment that these kids had within themselves gave me a new sense of inspiration and passion for my work. Their dedication proves just how serious the problem of HIV/AIDS is in the region, and it proves that we need to do everything in our power to beat it once and for all.

In other news, starting to get very excited for the Super Bowl. Sunday night will be a very very late night but its hands down one of my favorite events of the year so I’m going to find a TV and get my popcorn ready.

Prediction – Colts 31, Saints 23