events, events, events

Hola amigos!

(This is our news as of last week because we had a virus and couldn´t upload before... have since had an interesting weekend which we´ll update you on next time)

Water balloons and water guns are a daily fear whenever we leave the house because it’s Carnival season! After a few near misses and many hits, we have another month of wearing waterproofs ahead.  It is the end of a busy week of events for the team so we are all tired! Because of Carnival we have this Friday till Tuesday off and we are taking the opportunity to join a local church on their camp from Sunday till Tuesday in a random town which apparently has thermal pools!  We’ll see how that goes…!

After two weeks of preparation and unknowns we had our first public fair in the central plaza on Monday. Things started off Bolivian style as after putting up our tent we were told we had to move to a different area of the plaza (even though the fair had technically started half an hour before) which involved eight people picking up two tents and struggling through a busy plaza. After all this kerfuffle was complete we all felt very proud as our tent and decorations looked great and we were definitely the most inviting and striking tent of the lot! I think an essential element was our terribly English bunting draped across the tents. Our aim, working for Patsida, was to raise awareness of the realities of HIV/AIDS and advertise our form of prevention. The fair was typically Latin American as a procession of young people; musicians and banner holders came colourfully dancing through the plaza, including a big group of boys dressed as condoms! We were surprised at how willing people were to stop and talk to us on the street. We spoke to loads of people who were interested in Patsida’s prevention, general HIV facts and myths and realities game. Our Roulette game captured a large audience in which people were asked questions about HIV or given prizes. The English team took the task of speaking about quite a complex issue in Spanish in their stride and all showed great teamwork (at one point there were 5 people explaining different parts of the Patsida prevention).  

Tuesday morning we were at a school fair which proved rather chaotic because we did not expect loads of primary school children to be there as well. Seeing as our material is targeted at teenagers we had to fend off loads of children desperate to play the roulette game with crosswords and pairs. That afternoon we had a visit from our in-country manager, David who gave us advice as we prepared for a workshop with night classes that evening. We had no idea what to expect, only that people who attend these night classes were generally from poor backgrounds, had dropped out from school and worked during the day and the classes would be around 30 people. We arrived to find we had two classes of 50 people or more, there was a real mix of people and different ages with some mothers and babies. We were all pleasantly surprised at their willingness to learn, engage and listen to what we had to say (much better than in the typical British classroom!). The English team started off with an introduction and we played a ‘myths and realities of HIV’ game, a jigsaw factsheet race and discussion on how we could tackle the rising HIV rates in society. We finished with an explanation of Patsida’s form of prevention which went down really well because of Eduardo’s (Patsida Sucre leader) expertly funny acting.

Wednesday involved another early start to get to another health fair. Somewhat similar to Monday morning, all the attendees arrived in procession, dressed up singing and dancing. It was a really good atmosphere and we managed to talk to a good number of people about HIV, as well as a sneaky dance with the locals and some fancy dress zebras!

We’re having a welcome break after so many events but we learnt so much and are currently evaluating and improving on everything.