An Eye Opening Experience

While the classroom experience opened my eyes to the finer points of volunteering, today, my eyes were blinded by the light. We’ve been talking about peer education, and all of us paired up and were told to come up with a session on a certain topic for a certain group and then present it to the group. Demond and I had “High Risk, Low Risk, No Risk.” With women ages 24-30. The peer ed manual provided a pretty detailed description of the session on assessing risks of contracting HIV/AIDS through certain activities and we only changed a few things. I went into this project very laid back and unconcerned. Hey, I had already affirmed I had aced Social Skills101, what was the worry? Boy, was I in for a surprise. We were the fourth or fifth group to go and with each group before us, we, the audience had to act according to the presenters’ audience; church goers, 16-17 year old boys, 16-24 mixed, etc., but really, no big deal. With me and Demond, however, it was a whole other story. We introduced ourselves, talked about what we’d be doing and what the first activity was… we got no response out of them! We repeated ourselves, kindly teased for some response, but nothing. We were doing everything the staff had been teaching us, everything the other presenting teams had done, and the response and participation was zilch. For about half the time, I thought it was because we were presenting badly and they were truly bored and confused. This made my confidence falter greatly. Never has the silence been so awkward.

With my confidence faltering, my objectives went out the window and I felt like an alien in the room. I changed my tones, tried to clarify instructions and tried prompting the “women,” but not much worked. We asked them to place a statement in a category of High Risk, Low Risk, No Risk or Unknown. People seemed confused and unsure, and just stood around, in small groups, murmuring when they should have been walking about, and picking the category their situation fell in. I asked DeAnna if she needed help and she nodded, murmuring she didn’t know where hers went. I read it aloud, wondering if she “couldn’t read” and asked her what she thought – she said she didn’t know. Oh crap! This group must not know much about HIV! Can they even read? WHY did we assume so much? Obviously, loud peppy, active tactics weren’t going to work for these people. Whatever role PC staff told them to play, they were doing it beautifully. Unfortunately, loud, peppy stuff was all we had created! I realized we had created our program based on the dynamics of our group, not of our target group and certainly not taking into account any detours or problems. We assumed they had been exposed to the meaning of HIV, and had basic knowledge of how you can contract it. With the limited responses, I felt the need to speed things up, move on – get the hell out of there. We addressed some of the sticky notes, but it seemed like we were getting nowhere. So we left the majority of them where they were placed – a bad move on our part, because we could have exposed them to the info even if they weren’t participating. We should have adapted our session to be one of HIV ed and had gradual participatory activities. After the sticky note activity, we were going to do a debate – obviously a bad choice for the group. We ended up just having them split into two groups and discuss why the scenario we came up with could be low or high risk. One group said “Shannon’s the only person who can read.” OOOh, another hurdle. I briefly convened with Demond, though only to ix-nay on the ebate-day, and we basically remained phased about it all – I did, at least. I went to one group, who seemed comatose. It felt like I was looking into the souls of my fellow PCT’s, pleading with them to connect with me. I finally understood they were playing a part, but the realization came too late – I just wanted the experience to be over.

I felt like a failure and way too big for my britches, or however the saying goes. It certainly made me alert to the fact that even though training wasn't always hardcore in your face, PCVs certainly are called to do some hardcore things – this was no walk in the park. I dunno, part of me had centered my thoughts around kids and other young, modern people being the main focus of my assignment. Which is dumb, of course, my assignment wherever it will be, will involve an entire community, not just one part of it. I have been reminded on various occasions of the solemn duty ahead of me. The accident was one of those times (a car hit a motorcycle just a few houses down from mine a few weeks back. Two died.) My experience at the primary school where there was no order, no discipline. There it was, reality screaming me in the face – children in need of a stable teacher, education and guidance. And while these moments have been the most terrifying of my weeks with the PC, they’ve also bee the ones where I've felt the most alive, most aware of my struggle for a place in this world. I felt held accountable, I felt weight and wanted. And while I didn’t totally bomb it, there’s certainly room for improvement. It’s vital I’m prepared to fill the shoes of a PCV, I want to do the PC and my country proud. Ergo, my main focus right now will be reading and studying all the resources given to me. I can’t lose my purpose for being here.