A Health Festival
It’s not easy for a young mzungu female to get a captive audience of young Tanzanian males, but there’s really no way for them to escape if they are in the middle of a soccer game for which you have provided the ball. Last week we had our “Health Cup” soccer and netball tournaments, and I went to each of the 6 games with my counterpart to do skits at halftime. We tried to make them funny but with the main message that people should get tested for HIV. The first was about a person who had HIV but it was hard to believe because she seemed to be plump and healthy. The second was about a girl who didn’t want to get tested because she didn’t have time or money and was scared of the results. The third and fourth were about a couple where the girl refused to marry the guy until he got tested. The last two were about testing for the health of an unborn child.

I think the one they liked best was when I dressed up as a man who fell in love with a young girl (my counterpart). I came to her very shyly and tried to tell her that I wanted to get married, but the words for “to kill” and “to marry” are very similar, so I pretended to get them mixed up. Another way to say “to marry” is similar to how you say “close the bucket,” so I explained how I wanted us to “close the bucket” together. Then when we got it sorted out, I told her that we weren’t communicating because her Swahili was not very good, and she only knew “Kihehehe.” I was very surprised that she would refuse to marry me until I got an HIV test, and I told her that I’d never done “wheat” before in my life (the words for wheat and sex are only 1 letter off). I wasn’t sure at the time whether people were actually accepting the message of the skits, or whether they just found them amusing.

It seems that everyone in my village has a strong opinion about voluntary HIV counseling and testing. A great majority thinks testing is a good thing to do. Many are scared to get tested and don’t see the point as there is no cure. A few see it as a bad thing, and claim that people who know they are infected will deliberately go and infect others so that they will not die alone. A few fear the doctors, think they are liars or crooks, or suspect someone involved in the process must have ulterior motives for doing the testing. But it’s always healthy to have a few skeptics.

At 10:00 in the morning on Saturday I started to panic. The “Health Festival” signs had been posted, flyers distributed, and announcements had been made at funerals. Everyone in town, and many from the surrounding areas knew that there would be music, entertainment, soccer and netball finals, and, most importantly, HIV testing on Saturday starting at 9:00 am. Five different people had already told me they wanted to be first on the list to get tested, but the testers hadn’t shown up and I was starting to sweat. One man had accused us of lying to the villagers and was threatening to start telling everyone to go home (which I found odd because things generally start at least 2 hours late in the village).

The generator and TV set-up that we planned to rent from the next village up had fallen through (the owner had realized that morning that the TV wasn’t really working). About 30 villagers had gathered already, along with primary and secondary school students, and were waiting for things to start.

The sound of a car pulling up was music to my straining ears. The doctors gathered and gave a speech about HIV and testing under the bamboo/sisal “tent,” whose skeleton, left over from the grade 7 graduation, had been resurrected for the event. One thing they mentioned was that usually the vast majority of people who show up for testing are female, but they were surprised that it wasn’t the case in my village. I think this might be due to our efforts to target young males with our mid-soccer-game skits, but I can’t be sure.

The villagers gathered at the primary school and went in to one room for testing, and then waited to enter another room to receive their results one-by-one. While people jostled each other at the classroom doors (lines are non-existent here) we played music and watched plays performed by various groups.

I had expected maybe 30 people to get tested, but was hoping for 100. By the end of the testing, a total of 238 villagers had been tested, 22 of whom were positive. I realized upon hearing these results that I had been hoping unrealistically that nobody would be positive. The idea of testing is that those who are negative will be happy to hear their results and will continue to take care of their health. Those who are positive will lead healthier lives, avoid infecting anyone else, get further counseling and possibly go on anti-retroviral therapy. The results cannot be considered a good representation of the number of infected individuals in the area because testing is voluntary, but it’s better than nothing.

The day ended with the netball and soccer tournaments, and me going home to find my cat in labor. It was a hectic day, but I was very happy with the number of people tested.