Looking Back at AIDS Awareness Week

It seems like every school subject in Namibia includes at least one lesson on HIV/AIDS. The message of abstinence is drilled into learners’ heads beginning in Grade One, and by the time students reach secondary school, the words are tired, played out and mostly meaningless. So when I found out this was HIV Awareness week I wanted to do something different with my AIDS Club. Something that didn’t involve long speeches or boring lectures. And I wanted an approach that didn’t rely on instilling fear or making threats.

After years of being the students—subjected to Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education initiatives—I asked the twelve members of my club to instead, become the teachers. (Most of them already know more about HIV and AIDS than kids their age in America.) Rather than sit in class and listen to me talk about the best methods of protection or the importance of using a condom (things they’ve been told countless times before), I asked them to consider the messages they thought were most important. Things they’d been told by friends, teachers and nurses that they wanted to share not just with each other, but with their community, too.

So for two Wednesdays, these secondary school learners brainstormed and they drafted. They used sheets of flipchart paper and markers, crayons and colored pencils (all sent from friends and family back at home—thank you very much!!!) to create their own posters for HIV/AIDS. Posters that would be showcased in front of classmates during morning assembly, but that would ultimately end up on the walls of the Rapid Test center at the Khorixas Hospital.

The kids were more than enthusiastic about being given the chance to be creative. (I think the colorful supplies definitely had something to do with that.) But more than anything, after years of being on the receiving end of AIDS-related messages, I think they were grateful for the opportunity to tell others what they’d learned. Instead of being reminded of what they didn’t know, they were asked to recall and share all that they did.

On Thursday we met outside the school gates and walked together through the Location, back to the hospital and into the testing center. It was a place most of the learners had never been before. They filled every seat in the waiting room and listened quietly as employees explained the testing process from start to finish. And they asked tons of thoughtful and intelligent questions that really impressed me. It was clear their base of knowledge was high and their desire to learn more was great.

When we left, I felt like they walked away with something. Information about the testing center? That was a given. But pride? That was something new. Because for the first time, with colorful posters and positive messages, they were able to prove to their community that learners can sometimes make the best teachers, too.