HIV/AIDS Education Bike Trek!!

Written on November 8th, 2010

Last week myself and eight other volunteers set off on an HIV/AIDS Education Bike trek from Barra to Farafenni (over 110 km). We stopped at five schools along the way, teaching 160 students at each school for a total of 800 students. At the same time two other teams of ten volunteers were doing the same thing in the area surrounding Farafenni and in the Central River Region (CRR) from Janjanbureh to Farafenni. In one week our group of volunteers, supported by counterparts from the National AIDS Secretariat, reached 15 schools and over 2,500 Gambian upper basic (middle school) students, teaching them a 4+ hour lesson on HIV/AIDS risk, transmission, protection and stigma. What a week for Peace Corps The Gambia!
Along with Erica, I was in charge of the planning and coordination for the team that went from Barra to Farafenni. This meant feeding, housing, coordinating and motivating our team of PCVs and two members of the Gambian Cycling Association, Edi and Musa, who joined our team. Based on how inspiring and motivated our fellow volunteers are it was all in all a relatively easy task to keep it all going and together during the week. For the month before Erica and I lived and breathed bike trek but once everyone else showed up our job was made so easy. We had a team of amazing, strong, motivated and competent volunteers who all stepped up and gave their all to make this project a success.
So how did we spend our days? We would wake up every morning and go to the school where we would be teaching for the day. In teams of two PCVs we would break into four classes of forty students each. For the next 4+ hours we would work our way through the lesson "HIV/AIDS: Finding your own voice." The lesson featured lecture, games, drawings and diagrams and drama all aimed at teaching the students about HIV and encouraging them to feel confident to talk about HIV with their friends and family.
For most of the week we taught Grade 9 students and teaching in the Gambian classroom definitely presented its fair share of challenges. For one thing learning here is very strongly focused on memorization and regurgitation. Independent and abstract though is not really fostered and students often fear contributing unless they know the correct answer so getting them to "take a guess" is very difficult. The classroom atmosphere is very teacher centric--the teacher stands at the front of the class and talks at the students. The way we as Americans teach students is in a very child centered way and this is completely foreign to the students. It takes them a while to realize that we're not going to chastise them if they get the answer wrong or yell at them for asking a question if they don't understand something. Additionally, though most of these students understand a fair amount of English there was still a pretty high language barrier. We asked all schools to put two teachers in each classroom to observe and also to help translate things into local language when that became necessary. When the teachers were present, both physically and mentally, it worked out great but when that wasn't the case teaching and classroom management were definitely difficult. There were, despite the challenges, many times during the week when you could see something in a students mind click with understanding. When explaining how HIV attacks the immune system we drew a picture of the human body, the picture looks kind of like a football play with viruses coming in to the body to make it sick and how the immune system, or "blood soldiers", attack the virus to keep the body healthy. On the first day of the trek, at Essay Upper Basic School, I walked into the classroom at the break and came across a group of students all drawing the picture for each other and explaining how HIV works. later in the lesson we played a game called "Hyenas and Goats" where the students take on the roles of baby and adult goats and hyenas to show how the immune system (adult goats) protects the human body (baby goat) and how when HIV takes away the immune system, opportunistic infections (hyenas) can come harm the body. Many times during the week as students got all excited playing this game you could see the wheels of understanding starting to turn in their heads.
Just as the wheels of our bicycles turned this week as we rode from Barra to Farafenni, everyday as we stopped in Essau, Berending, Kuntair, Kerewan and Salikenne, we were able to experience many moments where students started to see, understand and discover on their own. The lessons were never perfect and in every class we were lucky if we had five or six really engaged students--but nonetheless it is those five or six who could make the difference and who will make a difference. As we were planning the bike trek the biking aspect was for the most part merely a way to get from one school to the next without having to find money for a bunch of fuel. But, for me at least, as the week went on biking started to take on a greater significance. As we moved from one place to the next I would find myself looking out across the plains of grass, baobab trees and mound of groundnuts and breathing deeply. I often found myself reflecting on my life here, my service and what type of impact my work and time spent here is having on this little country. I don't believe that I will ever be able to look back and say, "Then, that was the moment that I changed the lives of the people in Kerr Jarga." Rather it will be moments like this, project like this, that touch a few people, a few students, and help them start to think about thing a little differently. Maybe they just understand a little better how HIV is transmitted of how to protect them selves--maybe they remember that we told them they had a voice to speak loud and proud about HIV. No matter how a project like this impacts them the most important thing is that they realize they are the one who controls their future. They are in charge of their own development and they can really make a difference. If one student realized that by the end of the week than the hours and kilometers of biking and my very sore butt as a result will all have been worth it.