As volunteers we have two ‘projects’: our primary,
which is our assigned project or program, and our secondary, which is where we
can apply our creative liberties in what we are passionate about. Through out
my service, I have experimented with different secondary projects. I worked
with a small group of girls doing arts and crafts and baking, it wasn’t long
until drama ensued at school and the group of besties was no more, leaving the
seño (miss) to eat all the cookies by herself.
I then started teaching English, which was not bad but it is easier to
speak English then it is to teach it. Especially when the only interest in
learning English is to send sweet text messages to your sweetie and translate
lyrics of Miley Cyrus songs (no, thank you). I even tried a school garden, but I have the opposite of a
green thumb, everything I touch turns brown.
Even as the HIV committee representative for the
department, I just considered it another job, one more thing to report on. It
wasn’t until a conversation with a Guatemalan woman, who had only heard rumors
about this disease that you can contract simply through eye contact with an
infected person (myth). It was then that I knew that for the remainder of my
service I would do what I could to spread the word about the reality of
HIV/AIDS.
In the last week of November, the nationwide
promotion of HIV testing “Hazte la prueba” (take the test). I assembled a group
of city hall employees to get tested, some were more willing than others and it
was a great opportunity to share the importance of being tested. 17 people were
tested that day, some for the first time. I probably looked and sounded like a
crazy person walking down the street telling people to get tested for HIV, but
it worked. Later that night, around 9, I hear a knock on my door and it’s a
friend who heard me talking about the HIV test. She came in and we talked, she
asked a lot of questions and had a lot of concerns. She was over 30 years old
and had never seen or used a condom with her partner, who she suspected of creeping
around. It was shocking to me, so I used that opportunity to show her a condom
demonstration. Yes it was awkward, doing a condom demonstration at my kitchen
table at 10 pm but as a woman she has the right to know how to use a condom and
protect herself. I spent a good
amount of time thinking about how many other women who have been told they have
no business using condoms.
It was at that moment, I decided to dedicate the
rest of my service to HIV/AIDS education, one condom demonstration at a time.
