Dennis Walto, PSI/Lesotho’s Country Representative, recounts his visit to a Basotho village in Lesotho, where his team conducted an HIV-prevention outreach session.
Cecelia laughed nervously as she dropped the laminated activity cards; it was just past 7 PM and the group had been gathering over an hour for tonight’s Pitso or village meeting. The Chief was clearly disappointed at the turnout, 8 women – each with a child at the hip, and three men, boys really, with another 3 or 4 looking on from a distance – far enough not to be present, but too close not to be noticed. The Chief had sent out the call to all herd boys and men yesterday, and repeated the message several times today, and he was expecting a large crowd. When it was clear that the masses would not be coming, he seemed to take it out on those who actually were there and the folks who had come were to share his displeasure at – and to –those who had not heeded the call.
I don’t blame them for not coming. HIV is not an easy topic to saddle up to, and many people would rather work with those afflicted than talk to those at risk of infection, and here was no different. Maybe it was because when you talk about HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa, you are really talking about safe sex, and that means talking about sex, an uneasy topic in almost any culture, but especially so in the 90+% Christian Lesotho. And, well, no matter how many times you watch a lubricated male condom slide over a nine-inch wooden penis or observe someone insert a female condom into a wooden box facsimile of a vagina, I cannot imagine that it gets any easier.
But here we are, two PSI/Lesotho Field Educators, one Program Officer, one Regional Manager, and me, the Country Representative, setting out to do just that – talk about sex.
Read the complete post on our blog to see how the outreach session turned out.
