In-Service Training (IST)

I attended In-Service Training (IST) January 26-March 2. This was the first time that our training group had been together since September 12th when we swore in as volunteers.

We were given the opportunity to spend the night with our homestay family (the family we lived with during training) or just visit them. I elected to just spend the afternoon with them because I have kind of grown out of that situation. When I returned there I felt very awkward since my homestay father died just before the end of training and the room was in the house. The similarity between living in the house with that family and when I was living in the states with my family was chilling and made me kind of homesick. It was nice to see everyone again and give and get an update but that's all I needed.

It was very exciting and fun to reconnect with those that I had gone so long without seeing. It was also sad because we had lost over 10 of the original 44 people who we had landed in South Africa with in July.

During this training we reviewed what we had done since we went to site in September and workshopped by various organizations. I found a few of them to be very helpful and I intend on incorporating them into my service. An organization called Food and Trees for Africa presented and they offer training on planting and caring for trees and gardens in developing communities. I see them being useful in many projects I am doing including the sports field project and school renovation/expansion.

Two men, Neil Orr and David Patient, came and gave us an all-day workshop on AIDS and the work they were doing. David has been HIV positive for 26 years now and Neil was his partner. I entered the workshop thinking it was going to be boring but was pleasantly surprised. Instead of the usual presentation where someone comes with a powerpoint presentation filled with slides of HIV/AIDS statistics and stressing how important and widespread the struggle is it was an informal discussion. They gave a few statistics on HIV/AIDS in South Africa but the discussion was more on how we talk to other people about it. There have been scare campaigns to encourage people to have safe sex and get tested but it hasn't been working too well. South Africa is making a huge effort to get people to get tested and "know your status"; they have also changed the message to "live positive". Their message was that being HIV positive isn't a death sentence and you can still a long, productive life. It's not saying that it won't eventually kill you but it can be managed allowing you to live HIV positive for many years.

They also told us about the unorthodox approaches they have taken to spread the word of having safe sex. They sat down with a group of bishops in Mozambique who were against the use of condoms in sex and non-procreative sex. Together they created a list of sins and ranked them according to how severe. After a long discussion, the bishops decided they would be willing to give in on wearing condoms to prevent adultery, the spread of HIV and all of the other things that come with it. The most shocking part was the "relationship improvement" workshop they convinced the bishops to attend and then give to their congregants. It was actually about tantric sex which would theoretically improve their relationship, decrease their likelyhood of cheating on their partner, and reduce the opportunity for the spread of HIV. I do not intend to starting giving these workshops to the people in my village but it did get me to start thinking about HIV/AIDS education as more than a lecture that needs some creativity to be effective.

I left IST excited to return to site and get started again with the new information that I had gained. I hope that everytime I leave site I will have something that keeps me wanting to return to resume my work.