Peace Corps Volunteers are “on the front lines” in the battle against HIV/AIDS and in the trenches the view is not pretty. Public health efforts reveal Africa’s gravest weaknesses; overreliance on foreigners, disorganization and incompetence at all levels of the government, widespread ignorance caused by politicians and religious figures, gender inequality and a host of bizarre cultural practices are issues that spring immediately to mind.
What is my job in this noble fight? I help out with the school’s FEMA (Female/Male) club, teaching my student’s “life skills,” a worldwide strategy which tries to prevent teenagers from having sex. I’ll train some of the best students as “peer educators,” so they can bridge the age gap between myself and my students. Activities involve playing games, drama, organized sport events, musical performances; all things that are worthwhile for their own sake, but the only way to get money for an event is to connect it tangentially to HIV/AIDS. FEMA is a countrywide organization best known for its magazines aimed at youth; as most teenagers don’t have much money the only way to distribute a youth-oriented magazine is to connect it to HIV and look for foreign funding. “Life skills” is such a broad term as to almost meaningless, and it’s not clear there is any learning at all taking place.
In Tanzania, Peace Corps supports a public health program, made of liberal arts majors with the thinnest real-world credentials (at least I have a chemistry degree). Health volunteers run FEMA clubs like mine. They go to district health meetings and listen to officials. They try to teach improved farming methods and do things with orphans. Mostly, though, health volunteers do nothing because they have no real job and people in their communities have things to do; a large number of health volunteers end up teaching science in nearby secondary schools, just like the rest of us, out of sheer boredom.
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