World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day

So, I realize it has been months since I wrote on this blog and I could go on with a list of reasons why but I won’t. I will just do my best to fill you in on the happenings here since November.

Basically all of November was spent preparing for World AIDS Day (December 1st). I will preface this by saying – it got out of control. So, Mike and I got a little ambitious and planned a few too many activities. Then, we also let everyone else add in their two cents about what we should do. Phil wasn’t able to help out because his mother was going to be visiting Cameroon during World AIDS Day. Every week in November, Mike and I met with both the health club and the English club at the Lycee (the local high school) – most weeks we had 2 or 3 meetings. I met multiple times with my counterpart to plan the exact schedule of events for World AIDS Day and the 4 days leading up to it. Mike and I met with the mayor about 5 times trying to get the money situation worked out. The commune of Bibemi was paying for our World AIDS Day activities but actually getting the money takes multi visits and protocol. We had to go into Garoua twice to get supplies – we were making posters, t-shirts, and we were making 700 AIDS ribbons.

THE PLAN: With the English club we planned to do one sketch (short play) in English at the Sous Prefecture (a government official building in town) on World AIDS Day – that was it. But, with the health club we planned to do about 5 sketches and pass out lots of information about HIV/AIDS in French around the schools. The health club wrote all 5 of these sketches. We made 10 posters that got put up around town reminding people that December 1st was World AIDS Day and with AIDS prevention messages written on them. We were planning a round table discussion at the Sous Prefecture on AIDS with the doctor from the hospital, the chef of the health center, and the nurse from the Lycee as well as interested teachers, students, and community members. We also planned to have a question and answer game played at the Sous Prefecture before the discussion. The week leading up to World AIDS Day we planned on having a girls cross country race, and boys cross country race, a soccer tournament, and a handball tournament. Then, at the Sous Prefecture on World AIDS Day we planned to give out prizes and trophies to the winners.

WHAT HAPPENED: Well, it didn’t go as planned. There was no girls cross country race. The boys cross country race literally involved Mike and my counterpart going around town on a motto convincing people to run in the race. We got 10 people to run, including Mike. Mike placed 7th (and he is a good runner!) and was beat by a man with no shoes. The soccer tournament went well – Mike’s team, the Kapsiki neighborhood team, won!!! The handball tournament was really just the two Lycee girls’ teams playing against each other, but handball was played. The night before, my counterpart and I got in a huge fight about trophies, he had his friend making them and was charging us 10 dollars each for the CHEAPEST trophies I’d ever seen. I said we weren’t going to pay and that his friend could give them to us at a reasonable price or keep them, I didn’t care. We went back and forth arguing about this and Mike finally asked me whether I thought it was worth fighting – I wasn’t our money, we were under budget, we should just pay and let it go. I said, NO to me it was worth fighting just on principle, but that if he wanted to pay I would take one of the team and let it go. And so I did. Day of, Mike and I had made tons of World AIDS Day ribbons – we ran out of safety pins so we got creative with ways to attach them. Pens in the pockets to hold them together, paper clips, etc. Those were gone by 8am. We had 30 shirts made to give out to the key players in World AIDS Day – but that didn’t stop EVERYONE in town from asking us for one. Literally, everyone. Mike and I showed up at the Lycee to run over the agenda for the day. But, we ended up with an impromptu addition to the agenda – we went around to EVERY class at the Lycee (like 10 total) and did a talk about World AIDS Day and HIV/AIDS in general. It was great. We had blown up condoms we threw around the rooms. We had packets of info about AIDS that the health club students prepared questions from. It was great. One of the classes was being taught by a nun from the local Catholic mission and she was so cool about it as well – she simply left the room for the 15 minutes we presented. In the younger classes the health club students told the kids they were too young to be having sex. It was hilarious. The Lycee is interesting because the kids range in age from about 9 or 10 to 25. That is a big age range! Mike and I finished this and then started running around setting up the Sous Prefecture. The communes chairs were at the mayor’s office – about a 10 / 15 minute walk from the Sous Prefecture – and we had to find carts to move them. The sound system needed to be set up but it wasn’t working with the CD player they had – so we ran to my house and got my old DVD player that didn’t read DVDs well and it worked just fine. It was around this point that Mike and I both took a shot of tequila. We hadn’t had time to eat or think or breathe yet. I think we might have split a bag of peanuts around 8am. Once we had the sound system set up, Mike and I started blasting music and basically dancing around outside to attract people to our event. NOTHING runs on time and so we weren’t sure when people would show up or even WHO would show up. So, around 2 the Lycee health club were there and we started the French sketches. The kids did GREAT. They were all different, funny, but with good messages – I was so proud. At the point where the president of the English club showed up he and I did the English sketch together. The question and answer session got out of hand because we were giving out prizes and a fight broke out over who got to answer one of the questions – so we ended that. Mike and I had decided that the actors in the sketches got shirts – but handing them out wasn’t possible because the MINUTE people saw our prize bag we were mobbed. We gave out the 2 trophies and the other prizes to the winners of the sports events from the past 4 days – people were very excited. My counterpart did this part with Mike while I guarded our other prizes. Around now, 4:30ish, the doctor and the nurse showed up. This was exciting because we weren’t sure if they would – there is one doctor for the health district of like 40,000 people so he is quite busy! So, we set up the chairs for the discussion and it went on really well. The people who took part seemed to really get a lot out of it. I didn’t get to take part because I was dealing with 300 children who were all loud and wanting shirts and trying to take our sound equipment. Mike had taken the task of trying to hand out the last 10 shirts to the actors. He got chased the kilometer back to his house by a mob of children. He didn’t have his keys, I did, and so he ended up back at his house with 4 members of his neighbors soccer team (the winning team) and 4 shirts left SO he promised them the shirts if they would help us take the chairs back to the mayor’s office (the carts were gone now). By this time its dark (like 6-6:30) and I am alone at the Sous Prefecture and had locked myself into the room where I had gathered all the chairs and sound equipment and was guarding them. Mike shows up with his teammates to find me like this. We are both SO exhausted at this point. We’ve been going for 12 hours and haven’t had much water or food at all. The last problem is – 5 of Mike’s teammates showed up and we had 4 shirts and Mike doesn’t know which one hadn’t been at his house – it is dark and we are tired. So, the 5 of them start to fight about who gets to bring the chairs back (thereby getting a shirt). They are taking chairs from one another. It is crazy. Mike hands out the 4 shirts to 4 of them randomly. The remaining guy is super upset and tries to talk to us and yelling at his last teammate, the 4th shirt winner. So, all of a sudden Mike and I decide that this old DVD player we are lugging back to my house to live under my bed is nothing but a nuisance. We have been thinking about who to give it to for a while now – so that 5th guy got it. Yep, as he is yelling about how he wants a shirt and he was promised one by Mike and blah blah blah, Mike takes the DVD player from my hands and thrusts it at the guys chest. He was blown away. He immediately stopped talking and said thank you. With that, Mike and I left, in search of beer. All we wanted was cold beer. Well, the brasseries truck hadn’t made it to Bibemi this week and there was NO beer or alcohol in the whole town. We know, we walked to EVERY day. We found 3 little Guinness’s at one bar, bought those, and went to my house. We had bought fried potato wedges off the street and ate those and drank our beers and watched something like Shrek the Halls on my TV. We both decided we had to get outta there the next morning ASAP, we need to go to the city and have a real meal and beer and maybe a shower – we needed a break from Bibemi. So, at 6:30am I was negotiating my price of my motto and I was asked about the DVD player. I pretended to not understand, got on my motto and left. Ahhh, it was over.

The next week at some point I went and brought the mayor back our left over money (it blows his mind every time we do this) and the final budget. My counterpart got mad and told me I couldn’t give him back money – we had to use it for something – and he wanted us to build some statue with it. I said no, that money was for World AIDS Day and we had about 20 bucks left over (of our 300 dollar budget) and so we gave it back to my counterparts disapproval. Then, I went to the hospital to talk with the doctor about how he thought it went. He was very impressed. Everyone in town told me how much they enjoyed the day and what a success they thought it was. I saw people wearing our shirts and ribbons until I went home for Christmas. While the day itself was crazy hectic and I am not sure I would do it again, I was SOOO happy it went well. Well done us.