More than halfway through the first camp! Today was the first day that we had two translators, as we added Vusi to the mix. He's a pretty great guy, and having three really helped us along. It also seemed to help them from being worn out.
We started off with just asking what they remembered from the previous day, which was surprisingly quite a lot. We collect their journals, where they take notes if they do take notes, at the end of every day and since we hadn't passed them out everything they told us was stuff they remembered. We were very impressed.
At this point we split them up so that half of the students worked on a page in their Hero Books while half went outside to try out the drunk goggles. Those things are fuuuuun. They're this huge pair of goggles that warps everything you see so that things are way closer or farther away than you think. They do a good job of making you dizzy and disorientated. The kids were hilarious in them and had a great time trying them on.
After that we finished up some lecture on drugs, covering Marijuana and a few others. Then it was my turn to try and teach them about HIV prevention, testing, and treatment. I did the first two relatively quickly and the students seemed to be getting just a little antsy, which we'd planned for.
After testing we decided to play a game with them. We handed every kid a paper bag. Inside the bags each had seven pieces of candy and an index card. Some had instructions on their index card and if they did, they had to follow the instructions. Otherwise, they had to try to share the candy with each other. Now, some gets were “abastainers” and were told not to share their candy with anyone. A few were called up in front of the other as monogamous couples, and only shared with their partner. Still others just had a C or an IC on their bag. Most of the kids had red candy, with a select few having green.
You see where this is going?
Yes, after the game, we asked everyone with a green candy in their bag to stand up. All of these people “got HIV”. Some people had stars on their bags and these people started with HIV. Those with C or IC got to sit down because they “used a condom”, so they were safe... EXCEPT those with the IC used the condom INCORRECTLY, so they did in fact get HIV (we're tricky). It was a fun little activity and the kids seemed to enjoy it.
After that was the treatment lecture and then we split the kids up into boys and girls. Machiko and I took the boys outside for a journal question and games and face painting while the girls got the lecture on rape. I wasn't there for the rape lecture, but I hear it went pretty well. It's important to stress to these kids that if they are raped, it isn't their fault (which is a common idea here).
There was a break for lunch in the middle and then we switched it up. The girls were very excited to get their faces painted and I guess the guys were more forthcoming than expected in their rape lecture.
By the time we were done with this we'd covered a lot of pretty heavy information, so we released the kids and went home.
That night we joined the little kids staying at IOC for some fun and dancing and games. They'd found a CD player and were playing some local music. We learned a dance that is kind of like a modified electric slide and I taught one heartbreakingly adorable little boy how to play “hand-clapping games”. His name was Siyabonga and as soon as I gave him that little individual attention he was attached to me for the rest of the time he was there.
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