heading off to Malawi!
Justin flies out to Malawi today. I believe he has to connect about 4 different times, including Frankfurt and Saudi Arabia!
Last week during a group meeting we got into a great discussion with Eva from Beehive about the cultural mentality in Malawi pertaining to AIDS, education, and life in general. What's concerning about the many roadblocks to fighting the spread of AIDS is more than just the difficulty in raising the people's awareness of what the disease does and how to get HIV. Our local contact, Niall Dorey who teaches at the Beehive school, said that actually, people are plenty aware of the existence of AIDS. It shows up on billboards, in soap operas, and in stories. BUT, this does not change the mentality that exists in many people, who rationalize their participation in sexual activities where they might get HIV with the thought that if they're going to die at 40 anyway from one thing or another like malaria, aids, or typhoid, they might as well enjoy life and sleep around. When life is so hard, that is sometimes their single enjoyment. Some people even consider it something to brag about, “I’m cool I have aids it means I sleep around a lot.” In order to change this mentality, it is feasible to think that if these people had more opportunities in life, perhaps they would value life more. That's an intense problem to tackle.
In our project at the Beehive school, we're going to try and instill in the students a sense of "life skills". Niall stressed the importance of this a lot. For example, when the students graduate from Beehive, they are around 11 or 12 years old, just starting puberty and becoming more involved in having to make healthy choices and resisting negative peer pressure. It's important that we share a positive attitude with the kids at all times. A closing comment that was made by Eva was that if the community members could see that what benefits everyone, benefits themselves, that will go so far. This is lacking in Malawi, they need a sense of community. If they had that, they might value themselves and their neighbors more, and each person might care more about their own future within their community and will therefore avoid destructive decisions. And of course, the foundation of a strong individual and a strong community is a strong education, like in Beehive.
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