One, Two, Buckle my Shoe....

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.