Teaching the abc's of sex in malawi

Amigos de las Americas
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Lend a Hand in a Foreign Land

eventually, I was in , acquiring ready to spend the next eight weeks of my summertime the ABCs to middle-school students. Weren't they a little old to be acquisition the alphabet? Sure, but I was at the World Camp for Kids, in capital of Malawi, Malawi, to them something new: how to prevent HIV and AIDS. The ABCs I introduced to them were: abstention, Be Faithful (monogamy), and Cover Up (using a rubber).

With mornings full of games and afternoons spent in classrooms, we taught the kid what AIDS is, how it spreads, and how to prevent it from spread. This is of no small importance in Republic of Malawi, where in 2002 about 20 percent of the adult population was HIV-positive.

You want a challenge? Try screening a roomful of 12-to-15-year-olds how to use a rubber. We used a ubiquitous prop: banana tree. Predictably, the kids smiled, snickered, and whispered while we tried to keep a heterosexual face ourselves, even for such a serious topic. But not every instruction tool was so dogmatist. The camp built up to a final day of presentations by the pupil, who had to perform a song, poem, study, or dance aboutHIV/AIDS not only for their instructor and chap campers but for the people we'd invited from the surrounding villages.

The skits were my favourite, better than a good afternoon soap opera. These kids came up with twisted plots: In one, a group of boys put on skirts, swayed their hips, and spoke in falsetto. In another, a mother and father conspired to set their daughter up with sleazy men. When they pressured her to have sex with them, she chased her parents and her suitors out of the house with a broom and announced to the crowd that no one could force her to say yes to sex. She knew how to say no - boldly.

World Camp for Kids in Malawi () offers both summer and winter sessions. Costs are $2,100 for a five-week camp.

Photo by Emily Carter