Angaradebou HIV/AIDS Training

In lead up to World AIDS Day I helped a fellow volunteer, Jennifer Morgan, with a two day HIV/AIDS peer-educator training. At her local high school in Angaradebou (about 5hours north of Tchaourou), we trained 20 girls and 20 boys how to educate their peers about HIV/AIDS.

Day one included lots of games, activities and demonstrations.

Here are the girls practicing putting on condoms

and playing a game
By day two, it was clear the students knew their information, so we spent the day teaching them how to give presentations. You would be amazed at how little these kids know about presentations. They turn their back to the audience, they cover their mouths while talking, and they speak quietly. It’s absolutely horrible. So, we took the opportunity to teach these kids the life-long skill of giving presentations. After several attempts, the kids finally started to understand what we meant by: “speak loud” , “face the audience”, etc.

Here are a few pictures of them in action

We took a break while the kids practiced their presentations and went to the market. I brought my camera along and took a few photos : typical stuff: garlic, pepper, salt, ect.
beautiful bariba woman. I was quite surprised she let me take her photo.

After break, we reconvened and the kids gave their presentations. All succeeded. And in true Beninese fashion, we held a brief awards ceremony where the kids received peer-educator badges for participating. Here's Jen's favorite student

(me, favorite student, Jen)

And the group! (You can't quite see me....top right, white face)

Abdullah's Naming

Another unique opportunity for cross cultural exchange. Steve’s work partner Kasim recently became a father for a third time, a healthy baby boy being born during our trip. This meant the boy was going to have to be named, and thus a traditional Muslim baby naming would be held.

Held on a Saturday morning, we arrived at Kasim’s at 8.30am to find all the traditional trappings – rows of rented plastic chairs, oversized blown out speakers, cases of small sodas stacked in the corner and a gaggle of women at the edge of the yard cooking wildly.




What was different was that at one edge of the square there were long mats rolled out and a series of older village men and women were singing, chanting and, well, yodeling.



The ceremony itself was very short with the Imam chanting briefly, followed by several rounds of charity donations made to the villagers sitting on the mats. As Kasim explained to us, the Imam said a prayer in which he mentioned the boy’s name – Abdullah, btw – and the charity given in his name was in the spirit of Islam’s pillar of charity, setting him on the path for a devoted life.



And we ate, and drank, and ate some more. I mean, it was a Beninese party, it's what we do here.