Ushujaa

Tyler jumping over a puddle and me about to follow. Rain, whenever it happens, is intense here.

RAIN

A drama perfomed by a class at the village

Tug of war

Bottle racing

Today we helped facilitate an HIV/AIDS awareness event called Ushujaa with our local partner organization ZANGOC. The event consisted of 2 dramas and a poem about HIV/AIDS, music, and many games such as bottle racing (where women balanced bottles full of water on their heads and raced across a short distance), lime and spoon racing, sack racing, potatoe racing, doughnut eating competition, and tug of war. It was fun and rewarding for everyone involved.

We were responsible for estimating the crowd size, keeping track of the number of participants in each event, along with their age and sex. We also helped distribute flyers about HIV/AIDS to people in the crowd; we managed to get rid of most of them. The crowd size itself was about 400, however 50% of them were under the age of 15 and did not understand our message. 40% were between the ages of 15 and 30, which is our intended audience for the inofrmation to reach because this is the age where people are most sexually active. Approximately 10% were above the age of 30. Of everyone, 60% of the crowd was female and the remaining 40% male. As well as keeping track of the number of people involved, we also had to conduct small 5 question interviews with as many people as we could about their knowledge of the disease, as well as if they believed Ushujaa actually helped spread the message.

The event took place in a small village far outside of Stone Town, and we hired a bus to take the YCI staff and volunteers, as well as the members of ZANGOC to this place. The bus followed a paved road for a while, then turned off onto a dirt road. After going over tons of bumps and being jolted out of our seats, the driver finally decided he was not going to risk damaging his bus. Kaiza and Shaib, 2 of our staff members, argued with the man for half an hour. Kaiza always means business, and I felt sorry for the bus driver who had to face her. Finally everyone got off the bus and walked the remaining distance on foot. The heat was intense and I was out of water by the time we reached the isolated little village in the middle of nowhere 30 minutes later. I thought to myself "How is a little place like this going to hold a big event like Ushujaa?" I guess people must have been hiding in the ground or something because seemingly out of nowhere we had a crowd of 300 within 20 minutes, and in another 40 minutes it had grown to 400.

Also on a side note we are in the "small rain season" here, so every once and a while it will downpour for an hour to half a day and soak everything that dares to go outside. It's a nice cool-down after being sweltered each day in the sun (30 degrees here normally). I heard that it snowed in St Andrews a few days ago. That sounds outrageous. I'll probably get frostbite the second I step off the plane in November...