Immediately when we set up the tent this man came over and started asking questions about why we were there. As we were explaining his eye caught the megaphone. He LOVED that megaphone. Within seconds he was telling everyone to come over and check out the tent through the megaphone.
One of the sisters and myself accompanied him around the neighborhoods. Since he lived there he knew where to go and provided a great guide. We just followed him around the neighborhoods talking to everyone and telling them about the free HIV testing down the road and the free drug and alcohol abuse class at the clinic. At first I didn’t say much. I just followed and watched and handed out the fliers. As I became more comfortable I started going up and talking to people. Our megaphone man helped out by telling everyone that I was his American girlfriend which started some interesting conversations. Most people there knew Basic English but I didn’t want to come off as that American who assumes that everyone can speak English. So I tried using some of the words I was taught, “molweni, unjani”, when I got a response I would say “Ndiphilile, enkosi”. This all means “hello, how are you” and then “I’m fine thank you”. Some people responded very well to me awkwardly trying to speak Xhosa and others just didn’t answer me.
It was really interesting to talk to everyone about HIV. Some people didn’t even want to hear anything about it and some people were very interested. Some people just wanted to check out the tent and watch what was going on. I went up to one women who told me she was just tested last month for HIV and she is negative, but she said how she has been fighting breast cancer for a couple of years. She then proceeded to ask me if we do cancer testing under the tent as well.
As we were following our megaphone man, we stopped at a bar in the neighborhood to talk to some of the people in there. The owner came out and was a little upset. He was speaking in Xhosa to the sister I was with. I couldn’t completely understand what they were saying but I had a good idea. One of the main issues is that HIV and AIDS is not talked about really at all. It is something that is hidden and to be ashamed of. Mostly, because people are not educated correctly about it. My friend told me that one of her students wrote in a paper that sneezing could spread HIV.
The main ways to get HIV is through sexual intercourse, sharing needles, blood transfusions and mother to child. Of course there are other accidents that can occur but they are rare. Our megaphone man turned and explained what the owner was saying. He was basically saying that if someone HIV positive came into the bar he might loose customers because they wouldn’t want to be around an HIV positive person. After he was done explaining this to me he said, “Girl, what would you do about this?” The best answer I could come up with at the time was to educate people about HIV and AIDS. To not treat it as some deadly disease that no one ever talks about. From what I understood, and I could be wrong, all people really know about HIV and AIDS is that it is deadly and not acceptable to talk about let alone to get help for. Not many people even understand how it is transmitted and what can be done for it.
Our megaphone man asked us to talk to his friend who is HIV positive and not taking her medication. When we tried to speak to her about taking her medications regularly she got very upset and the man she was living with was also extremely upset. It wasn’t understood that by taking the medications you could really prolong the onset of Aids. If HIV and AIDS was talked openly about then people may learn how to prevent contracting it and learn what can be done if you are positive.
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