Pics of HIV Calendar Drawing and Other Jazz



Kids drawing for the HIV calendar





The kids with their finished drawings.

Our shoes outside the classroom...I thought it was a nice photo...the kids thought I was a wierdo for taking snaps of their shoes :)

This boy's drawing was picked to go compete in Accra..this is his painting of it.

This is the other drawing selected.  They had never painted before and were super excited to get to keep the paints!

Batik Group



My favorite baby, Michaela.



Sexy Time

July 16, 2011

August 1 – 3, I will have an HIV awareness event in my village and Peace Corps will send me 5 trainees to help me.  I will train them and this will be their Peace Corps HIV training.  So I had Mawuli pick 2 young men and 2 young women from our village to help in the event.  I want to train those 5 to basically run the event and present it all in Sekua and then my 5 trainees will be their helpers and I’ll just run around and supervise and take pictures.

So the general outline for the program goes: Day One: (all events are in the evening as people go to farm during the day) General HIV information, introductions, and then 4 interactive HIV games that teach various aspects of HIV prevention and information.  These games are really fun and the Ghanaians really get into them and it’s a good way to present information without making people feel weird about talking about HIV; there’s still A LOT of stigmas here in Ghana.

Day Two:  HIV Short Films.  Peace Corps has some DVDS that were written and produced by young people in West Africa and each short film (2 to 10 minutes) deals with different aspects of HIV in West Africa.  So I’m going to get a projector from PC and use Chris’s computer and speakers (as my dvd player on my computer is not working!) to play the movies on the wall of one of the buildings in the community.  We have already screened the DVD’s and I picked out a handful to show to the community.  I was really impressed with the films; they were really well put together and really identified stigmas here in Ghana.

Day Three:  I’m going to put a box in the Tourism Center and tell people they can write any question they want and put it in the box all day.  Then I will take the box and my team will answer all the questions in the box in front of the whole community.  This way you don’t have to be too shy to ask your question.  Also, Mawuli and the other young adults are talking about putting together a short play for this day.  I’m leaving this completely up to them…Ghanaians really get into plays, so I’m sure it will be good.

So, I’ve met with my group of young adults twice now.  Their ages are 19 to 21, Mawuli is 26 and then his girlfriend Lena comes.  So in our meetings we talked about sex, I answered questions, we did condom demonstrations on the wooden penises, and practiced all the games we will play with the community.

Sex Questions:  I told them that adults all over the world like to have sex and that even if they don’t admit it, our youth, including some of us in this room, are having sex, and that it’s ok, but we need to protect ourselves.  I told them that I’m a 28 year old single woman, I’ve never been married, and I’ve had sex, and with more than one man.  Some of the men I loved and some I didn’t, but either way I protected myself with condoms because I love myself and some day I want to get married and have a healthy family.  I figured just being blatant and honest and putting myself out there was the best way to win their trust and assure them that this group will not pass judgment on each other and they can talk freely.  So then we talked about condoms and I answered questions: do they give you cancer?  It’s too embarrassing to go buy condoms, people will talk.  Can you reuse the condom?   I told them if someone tells you that if you use a condom it means you don’t love or trust them, then tell that person that you love them and yourself enough to protect both of you.  And if they don’t care enough about you as a person to want to keep you healthy, then piss on them and pick a different person.

So then one of the guys asked me that what if you want to stay abstinent, but you have urges, what can you do so you won’t have sex.  “MASTURBATION!”  Yup, said it out loud.  Then Mawuli raises his hand, “Jeanna, do girls masturbate?”  “Yes, we do.”  Another boy, “How??”  Then another boy stands up and tells us he has heard that if the girl takes a pillow and wraps herself around it like it’s a body, after 30 minutes the feeling will pass.  So I asked the boys, “When you have sex with a girl, do you just jump in?  Or do you do things to her to make her excited?”  “Well yes, you have to massage her vagina.”  “Yup, so that’s how we masturbate; we use our hands like you use yours on us.”  Mawuli, “Jeanna, do women like sex?”  “Yes.  Sex feels good to men and women.  In Ghana, it is a male dominated society and maybe the men here do not take the time to make their women feel sexy.  Many times they just say, ‘ woman, I want sex!’ That does not make us want sex.  But to have your man kiss you and massage you and make sure that you are wet and ready for sex, then yes we love it, too!”

So that was some of the more funny questions; and even as I’m talking to them I can’t believe that I’m doing this. That I’m standing up here talking about masturbation and getting a woman wet…never in a million years did I think I would be leading a discussion like this, but that’s what Peace Corps does…it makes you be able to talk about anything and do stuff on the fly.  I think it went well.  I also told the group that if they or their friends were too shy to buy condoms, that if they were brave enough they could come to my house and pick some because Peace Corps gives them to me.  And today, Lena (Mawuli’s girlfriend) brought one of her friends to my house to ask for condoms…it made me so happy!!!!!  I’m glad they feel comfortable enough with me and trust me enough to ask for them.  Also, this means that they are talking to their friends about what we talk about in the trainings…which is awesome!  I’m hoping that after the community presentation that maybe some different people and groups (youth groups, groups of women) will come forward and ask us about more specific information and classes, like how to convince the boys to wear condoms when they argue and tell you they won’t wear them, about how you can get free testing in HoHoe and it’s confidential and that knowing you have HIV early can help you live longer with it.  I’m actually really enjoying this so far.  I don’t know how it will be with the whole community, but talking to these 5 or 6 young adults has been a lot of fun and it makes me feel good that they will actually talk to me about this stuff.

So besides this event, I’ve been working with 15 the kids in my primary school to draw pictures for the 2012 PEPFAR HIV calendar.  This year the theme is “Protect Your Dream” and the kids are given art supplies (that they get to keep) to draw pictures showing how you can “protect your dream” and stay free of HIV.  We met four times last week and they drew pictures.  On Friday, I had a committee (teachers and the chief) select the top two drawings; this week these two will get to paint their pictures a few times, then I’ll select their best one and take the paintings to Accra next week and submit them to Peace Corps.  The pics are then rated and the best ones get to be the calendar pages for 2012 and the top 3 get really awesome prizes…last year the first place kid got a laptop!  So, hopefully my kids will do well.  My one kid is really talented.

Starting this coming week the PC group from before me will start to return to America.  It’s very sad.  I’m good friends with some of them and I’m really gonna miss them a lot!!  Yesterday we all met in HoHoe and sat around and drank beer and talked for a few hours…that was nice.  I’m going to Accra next week to say goodbye to two of my friends, go to a club and send them off to the airport L 

So that’s my life these days.  Staying busy, but now school will let out until September, so I’ll have some more free time.  August is gonna go by really quick!  I have to travel to the Eastern region for some training, have my HIV event, mine and Chris’s bdays (gonna hit the beach for a few days!).  I talked to dad last week and it was established that I’m short on funds, so flying to Morocco in November is looking less and less likely…dammit.  Finally I have a ton of vacation days to use and no money…damn the man!

Hope you all are well.  Love you and miss you bunches.

j

Juju

July 11, 2011

So last week 7 little kids from my village fell sick.  I was told they ate some fruit that was poisonous.  Monday 2 kids died, Tuesday 1 kid died, Wednesday another died, and Thursday the mother of one of the children (who hasn’t died yet) died.  Rumor was they ate some poisonus fruit, but people said it was juju.  Police investigations are being done to verify what caused the deaths.  Media came out to our villages and ran stories about the deaths.  Both our village and Bakua are greatly affected by this and everyone is very sad.  Wednesday I was taking a tro into HoHoe and could hear everyone clicking and “oh-ing” and the guy next to me told me that the 4^th child had died that morning.  One of the girls was in my afternoon class.

So yesterday (one week from when the children took the fruit) I got an update from Francis.  Apparently a man from Bakua was coming to Todome to pay back the 1,200 GHC loan he had borrowed from the susu.  When he arrived in Todome he realized the money was missing.  He took a tro back to Bakua to where he and another man were sitting before he caught the first tro.  He asked the man if he had seen the money fall out of his pocket; the man said no.  So the man who lost the money beat the gong-gong for two weeks to tell the village that the money was lost and whoever found it needed to return it to him.  No one came forward.  So the man went to a juju priest and the priest sent out juju to find who took the money. 

Now mind you, all this came out yesterday because my chief sent some of our elders to a far away village to consult the gods on why our children were dying.  The gods revealed that the second man in Bakua had taken the money and that it was the juju sent out on the behalf of the first man that was killing the people.  So our elders revealed this to the Bakua chief and elders.  They decided they needed to consult their gods, too.  Their gods came to the same conclusion, so they went and confronted the second man; he confessed to taking the money.

So Francis explained it to me like this:  juju does not kill or hurt you, but first it kills and hurts the people in your family, because if it kills you first, then you cannot make things right.  So this man who took the money, gave some of the stolen money to his wife (who did not know the money was stolen) and she bought food and cooked with it.  All of the children who died had eaten the food; they were nieces and nephews, and one son.  The man’s wife also died.  So now the man’s family will continue to die until his family pays back the missing money.  An old woman in the man’s family was taken to the hospital last night, we don’t know if it is from the juju or because she is just old.

So this is what Francis is telling me.  Also, the man who stole money tried to hang himself yesterday but the people found him and stopped him because he has to make things right or the juju will keep working.  Francis said that they will tell the police so that they will stop the investigation…the police and courts do not deal with juju, they will leave it to the community.  Also, the radio in HoHoe has been telling people not to eat the food from Likpe because their people have been dying from it because we use poisons and chemicals on our produce…so the village is mad about that, too.

I asked Francis how the man will be punished by the communities.  All the communities who had people die (the children are buried in their father’s home village) will fine the man; and since people around here don’t have money, he will be owing money for a long time.  People want to beat and kill him, but they cannot kill him or his burden will become theirs.  He will also be shunned.  People hate him because many innocent lives were lost because of his greed.  Francis said this guy was always nice and quite… “it is the still lake that kills.”  As Francis put it.

Oh, and the fruit the kids ate was Guava…which is not poisonous which is why the villagers started suspecting juju.  So if you don’t believe in juju, how do you explain these deaths?  Francis told me that if you believe strongly in God, then your spirit is too strong for the juju to hurt, but juju is very real and people who do not believe in God are very susceptible to juju attacks.  I asked what would happen to the guy who paid to have the juju sent, he said nothing would happen to him since he announced it to the community several times…he tried his best and then had to rely on juju to find the money.

So this is strange.  Francis said that this has never happened around here before…that so many people die of juju.  Very strange.

j