We invited 50 teenagers from the Jalapa valley and held the camp at the same eco-farm in the community of El Limon, about 20 kilometers outside of the city (and cell phone range!). We arranged for a private bus to take myself and the campers to the farm while other staff would meet us there on motorcycles.
December is the tail end of rainy season and Nueva Segovian rains (more specifically Jalapeno rains) are nothing to be dealt with. To get to the community of El Limon, you must cross two streams that can vary in size depending on the time of year. The first stream was easy to cross, but upon approaching the second stream, the bus just couldn't do it, so all of us took our belongings and started to hike the final two kilometers to the camp site. Luckily, the truck from the farm (finca) met us and took us the final kilometer to the site. We're very lucky that the rain had decided to take a quick break during that time, too, because that was the only time we were to see sun until the end of camp the next day.
After introductions and a few warm up dinamicas (ice breakers, activities), I showed a video by the Nicaraguan teen soap opera network "Sexto Sentido" that I had received from Peace Corps. The short films portrayed four young men, just like any other Nicaraguan men, who were all susceptible about contracting HIV and who all had fear of taking the HIV rapid test. After that, we showed another short film on how women who live with HIV are treated and stigmatized in Latin American countries.
Following the films, we had a brief reflection and started to talk about HIV basics: methods and fluids of transmission, prevention methods and the numbers of HIV (at risk age group, populations at risk, departments at risk, etc) in Nicaragua. The participants then had to sit thru a quite comedic (yet educational!) demonstration of a condom, hosted by yours truly.
Lunch time broke up the morning sessions and let the participants rejuvenate. During lunch, our invited guest from ASONVIHSIDA arrived from Managua to give presentations about the Law 820, which protects those who live with HIV/AIDS from stigma and discrimination and present them with equal rights.
ASONVIHSIDA (Nicaraguan Association of HIV/AIDS) is a Nicaraguan civil association that is run by people who live with HIV. Their mission is "to develop actions to help further realization of human rights of people with HIV or AIDS in Nicaragua and ensure humanized comprehensive medical care and access to medication or treatment to help improve their quality of life." They travel around the country providing peer counseling on HIV and AIDS, self-help groups, counseling and psychological care, as well as training and lectures on the subject to the general population.
As a member of the Peace Corps Nicaragua HIVaids Task Force, I have had the opportunity to work with members from ASONVIHSIDA multiple times and invited them to take part in the camp. They fortunately said yes and sent a representative up to my Nueva Segovian camp to educate the participants about the Law 820.
After lunch, we introduced the ASONVIHSIDA representative and she took the floor, intriguing all the participants. She did a thorough explanation of the Law and answered many questions that the participants had. I was very happy that the teens were so interested and engaged in her presentation; all the while, she had not mentioned her HIV status.
Her presentation lead to another presentation by me, educating the participants about different forms of birth control. Above all else, I reiterated (as we all did during the camp) that though birth control is an effective way to prevent teenage pregnancy, it is vital to always use a condom to reduce risks of contracting HIV and other STIs. With that information, the campers broke into teams and did group work to define different words: sex, sexuality, gender, love and teenage pregnancy. They all presented their work and I was impressed of the in-depth work they provided.
Dinner called shortly after and after we had full bellies, we returned to the presentation area where our ASONVIHSIDA representative had one last, brief presentation to give before we ended the night with karaoke and talent show. As previously mentioned, she had not revealed her status to the campers, only myself and fellow staff knew she was living with HIV. She quizzed the teens about her presentation from earlier and decided to describe further what ASONVIHSIDA is. She then told them that she has been living with HIV for the past 7 years and went on to explain her story. I watched the campers' reactions and they were all shocked: wow, a person who lives with HIV can look, act and be just like me?! After her reveal, the campers flooded her with more questions and didn't lose an ounce of respect for her. I was relieved that they didn't shame her or treat her badly, because they all had the self-realizations that someone who has HIV can lead a perfectly normal life just like them.
The next morning, after warm up stretches, we had the campers fill out a post-evaluation of the camp, describing to us what they had learned and how they will further use that information in the future: educating their peers, their families, and what other goals they may have with relation to HIV.
Our favorite guys from the COMUPRED brigade came back to set up an adventure run that the kids had all been waiting for. This time, though, I didn't participate. You do remember it had been raining the entire time, right? At each station, the teams had to present their name, motto, and song as well as answer a question correctly about HIV information they had learned the previous day. After which, things got dirty...the obstacles were as follows:
- Grabbing a chile-coated orange from a tree and eating it all as a team, without using their hands.
- Jumping over a 2.5 meter fence without touching the wood planks
- Creating a human caterpillar: each person gets down on their stomach (in mud and manure) and grabs the person in front's legs, with their legs being held by their teammate behind them and army crawling downhill to the river
- Crossing the river on all fours
- Running up a hill and walking together on two large wooden poles
- Continue running up a hill and blowing a balloon full of flour till it popped
- Running back down the hill to the river and eating a chile-coated pineapple in the water, without hands
- Create a line and fill up a bucket using water from the front of the line, passing it back
She also gave us Christmas Eve presents: Snickers bars and apples! The skies conveniently started to rain even harder, making us wait longer to leave, but as soon as the rain let up, we all piled into trucks and drove the few kilometers into the community of El Limon where the bus was waiting for us to take us back home.
I'm very happy that I had the opportunity to put on two successful grant-funded youth camps during my Peace Corps service. It helped me reach out to youth I may have not met outside of the institute in Jalapa and opened their eyes to new experiences: first aid training, meeting people who live with HIV, getting in-depth information about the illness, etc. I hope that ProFamilia can have this type of success with future camps, whether that includes a Peace Corps volunteer or not, but this is the kind of work that Peace Corps promotes: sustainability. Based on what I saw with my counterparts, I have no doubt that they will have no problem replicating this camp again in the near future and have just as much fun as we did in May and December.
There's a TON of photos! Check them out at the public album HERE!
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