desperation

today was the second day that we worked at kamwama full primary school.

i've discovered today that one of the standard 8 grade girls in our school (equivalent of 8th grade in the states) is pregnant. whats worse is that it may be a case of transactional sex from one of the teachers at our school. what often happens is that men in malawi approach women for sex and offer something in return for it. they think it's perfectly fine because he has something that she wants and thinks that sex is a perfectly fine exchange for it. so teachers may sometime offer them good grades on their standard 8 exams in exchange for sex, which the idea is just impossible because school teachers don't have any control over the grades of standardized exams here.

as i come in contact with the children and the adults here, i am learning a lot about the culture here, especially they way they deal with HIV/AIDS.

the main portion of what we did today was empowerment discussions for men and women separately. the other male volunteers and i led the male empowerment discussions and we try and get to the idea that the decision of having sex is shared by both the male and women because they both share equal risks for doing so.

by the end of empowerment discussions, we open the floor for anonymous questions, and we let the kids write their questions on slips of paper and we read and answer the ones that we're comfortable with answering. and we all knew that there were myths circulating about HIV around malawi, but we never experienced answering these questions these children, and i was a bit overwhelmed with emotion.

some of these myths regarding HIV/AIDS are:
if you have HIV, you can cure yourself by having sex with a virgin
if you have HIV, you can cure yourself by having sex with a disabled person
you can't get HIV when you're having sex for the first time

when i hear these myths, i am not so much appalled by them as much as i feel sorry. i think that these ridiculous myths show the extent of desparity that exists in this country to find hope for themselves. and i am even more amazed at the power of what we want to believe.

our housekeeper's father recently past away so he left to pay his respects. but as he as leaving, he said that everything is alright because this life is nothing, and the life in heaven is everything to look forward to.

i wonder if every malawian has that attitude towards their life. it makes me feel guilty that sometimes my life is so good that i don't even look forward to heaven.