SKILLZ Plus

I mentioned in one of my first posts that GRS Zambia is working on developing a curriculum geared towards HIV positive kids.  Once this is complete GRS will offer comprehensive coverage in the fight against HIV.  As I mentioned before, this comprehensive coverage is education, pretest counseling, testing, referrals to treatment for people testing positive, and finally an HIV positive curriculum, which is meant to educate HIV positive people on how to live smart, healthy, positive lifestyles.  This will be HUGE for the fight against HIV and a big step towards reaching our goal of an AIDS free generation.

Recently we have been making a big push to complete this HIV positive curriculum.  And I’m lucky to be one of the 3 people involved in creating this curriculum.  We have realized in the past few days what a large task this is.  Because of the psychological volatility of the situation, nearly every detail of what is said to these kids must be analyzed 10 times over because we can’t risk triggering a negative reaction.  One misstep could cause a patient to stop going to the clinic or taking their ARVs, and could cause their lives to spiral out of control.  If 1,000 kids go through our SKILLZ curriculum (our standard curriculum delivered to kids whose status is unknown but the vast majority are HIV negative) education and prevention curriculum and 10% reject it, not a huge deal.  If 1,000 HIV positive kids go through our HIV+ curriculum and 10% reject it, there’s now 100 kids whose lives we have effectively ruined.  That simply cannot happen.

It’s an incredible experience and its been a blast trying to come up with fun and effective games.  We still have a few kinks to work out but if we keep going at this rate and with this quality were going to nail it.  I look forward to reporting back the results once we get it into the field.

Planet Earth: Lake Malawi

If you like camping on the beach, crystal blue water, hanging out with crazy people and three days of amazing worldwide music then Mangochi, Malawi is the place to be in late September every year for Lake of Stars music festival.  It’s truly as awesome as it sounds.  BUT if you want to track monkeys, hear stories about black mambas, and watch a nine year old kid swim 5 kilometers then go to the village just north of Mangochi any time of the year and ask for the coolest kid in the world named Hossua.  He’s never ever left his village so he should be there waiting for you.

On Saturday afternoon, while the music was on hold for a few hours, we decided to trek north of the site of the festival to where we heard there was a swimming area with even clearer blue water and a big hill with tons of monkeys.  Jackpot.  When we got to the swimming hole we were lucky enough to have some entertainment as 4 young local kids in their whitey tighties were launching themselves off a nearby rock into the water.

After a good hour of cooling off in the water and watching the kids still jumping and screaming, we decided to see what these monkeys were up to.

When we walked past the kids they were in awe of white people who would venture outside the walls of the festival into their village.  When their wide-eyed stare didn’t fade, I invited one of the kids to come on a hike with us to find monkeys, not expecting them to understand anything I said.  They quickly answered in very good English, “Yes,” and came charging up the hill with us in nothing but their underwear and whatever they could quickly grab before following us.

Right from the get-go the second oldest brother took nature’s center stage, Bear Grylls-style.  He quickly introduced us to his older brother and two younger sisters before stopping dead in his tracks and jutting his arm out in front of me (Mr. Costanza’s move) to stop me from stepping on something with my flip flops.  He picks up what looks like a coconut but with thousands of micro needles on it and says “these ruins sandals.”  Then threw it aside and proceeded to step on a couple of the “sandal ruiners” with his bare feet with no reaction.  The thickness of the calluses on the bottom of his feet, showing he clearly had never worn shoes, made me wonder how he even knew what sandals were.

We continued up the trail to where the monkeys were and became sidetracked by a huge bald eagle in the distance. 

As we moved off the trail into some green bushes to get a better picture of the eagle, Hossua comes running towards us yelling for us to get out of the bushes.  Apparently a week ago he saw a green mamba (read: one of the deadliest snakes in the world) slither into those bushes and he said it would be impossible to see them in those bushes until it was too late.  We quickly hopped out of the bushes into salvation on the dirt path and continued our search for the monkeys.  A few minutes later Hossua, whose excitement constantly took him at least 20 yards ahead of us, stopped and waved us towards him.  

He pointed down at the ground to a “fresh monkey foot,” and just as we got closer he ran 10 feet away to show us a half eaten string-bean-looking-thing that monkeys love. He handed it to me and I had it about 3 inches away from my mouth to taste it as he casually slaps it out of my hand and tells me its poisonous to humans.  Without Hoss I’d be dead times 2. 

After thirty seconds of walking in the direction of the tracks we look up and see the coolest looking little monkey just staring down at us as he eats his monkey dessert, human poison bean.  

I noticed that Hoss gave the monkey what seemed like a really heartfelt snarl so I asked him if he liked monkeys.  He hates them.  Apparently they steal the corn meal (the base for every traditional meal in this region of Africa) from homes in the village so the locals hate them.  While we were dreaming of catching the monkeys to make them our pet and play with them, he was dreaming of bringing it back to the village so his family could get their revenge.

He said that the only way people ever catch monkeys is if they have a dog.  When we asked him if he had a dog he laughed and said they couldn’t afford it but they had a cat that would catch birds.  He tried to explain the type of birds that his cat (named “cat”) catches but we couldn’t understand what he was saying.  One of them flew over our heads and landed on a branch about 100 feet away but only Hoss saw it.  He tried to point it out to us in the branches but the bird blended in too well for any of us to see.  He picked up a rock and gave it a hefty sidearm throw into this tree.  As the rock curved right on target he casually says, “its right there” as the rock hits the bird dead on and it flew away.  He just as casually moves onto the next topic of conversation, disregarding the amazing fact that he has the arm of a right fielder and the precision of a brain surgeon.  That mixed with the fact that this kid has the mind of a scientist, I’m pretty sure if he ever gets out of his village he’s going to take over the world.

As he was telling us about his 5 km swims that he normally does in the crocodile and hippopotamus infested lake, he told us the story of getting out of the water and finding himself in between a black mamba (read: the deadliest snake in the world) and the fish it was catching.  With a rock in his hand as a last resort, he hopefully threw it the snakes way and swiftly avoided it, leaving the encounter a large scrape from an underwater rock.  It had just happened a few days earlier so he proudly showed off his cuts as a trophy of his triumph over the deadly snake.

Feeling sufficiently inferior as we trekked back to the water, I quickly tried to think of something to bring to the table and teach these kids who had at least 13 years less experience on earth than me.  Should be easy right?  So I picked up a flat rock on the shoreline and whizzed it off into the horizon, getting about 3 skips on the water before it sank underwater.  Hoss exclames, “WOAH” and comes closer to see how to hold the rock to skip it.  I show him and he grabs a rock off the ground and rears back and unloads.  He got a minimum of 25 skips before the rock settled underwater.  This kids a freak.

When we accepted our inferiority we sat on the beach and watched as the kids performed nothing short of a high priced circus act.  From balancing on each others arms to playing the butt bongos on each other to having a fashion show with our clothes to making slingshots that shot bamboo sticks with deadly accuracy.

Finally when we had to get back to our campsite we said our goodbyes and started to walk away before Hoss invited us to his house to see his father’s workshop where he makes different crafts out of ebony wood.  We gladly accepted the invitation and were not surprised when Hoss’s father showed us some of the coolest crafts I have ever seen.  We all put in an order for what we wanted and came back the next day to purchase so very cool African artwork. We then said our goodbyes to Hoss and the family and left Mangochi the next day with the coolest story of anyone in attendance at Lake of Stars.

The Hitchiker's Guide to Africa

The strong scent of fish and the incredibly weak sense of personal space filled the air on the bus from Lusaka to Chipata (the Malawi-Zambian border town) on our way to a worldwide music festival called Lake of Stars on the shores of beautiful Lake Malawi.  There were five seats across with a center isle packed high enough to feel almost like a fence dividing the right cluster of three seats from our neighbors in the left cluster of two. The amount of bags in the aisle would make Pablo Escobar jealous. I sat with two bags between my legs, neither of them were my own.  The only reasonable explanation for that many bags was that every person on this bus must have been moving to Malawi.

From what I've heard and now from what I've seen I'm sure that at least one of the large duffel bags at the base of the aisle wall holds at least some drugs that the driver is smuggling across border to supplement his measly 50,000 kwacha (~10 dollars) per 11-hour trip income.  That's why our plan is to get off at the Zambian border town and walk by ourselves across the border to a separate bus that will take us the rest of the way- because the immigration officers at the border know just as well as I do the chances that this bus (and most buses like it) is attempting to smuggle drugs across the border. So buses like these will be stopped at the border for 6 hours at a time for all the bags to be checked - often times unsuccessfully finding the drugs because a thorough search of all the hundreds of bags in this bus would take probably 12 hours. 

A sign pasted on the window to my right reads 'CAUTION. No over speeding / overloading on this bus. If noticed please call the following number +260 977 794043.' I’m contemplating calling it just to see if that’s even a real number.  As much as this would suck normally, I think since I just expect things like this, they don’t really bother me too much.

The driver’s helper (or copilot, if you will), who up til now has been pointing out potholes and animals crossing the road for the driver, just switched roles to the bus attendant.  As he gets up, he grabs a huge plastic crate of drinks and snacks starts jumping over around and under the bags like an Olympian to deliver refreshments to the riders.  As he got closer I realized he was handing out glass bottles of soda and on his first trip handed out the drinks only to come back on another trip to use another bottle to pop off the tops of everyone’s drinks.  He only had to go to the front half of the bus because a guy in my row was bossing the back half of the bus using his wedding ring to open the bottles.

The bumpy roads have forced the overstuffed overhead bins to lose their grip on the bags that they had been carrying for the first three hours of the ride, surprising the person sitting in the aisle of the three seat side just barely too late to react before it lands in their lap or on their head.  Sitting near the back, I watched the bins ahead waiting to see the next suspect for a lap cannonball.  A couple times the person was within speaking distance to successfully warn them but when the unknowing person about to get crushed was in the front row, the last thing I wanted to do was accidentally incite a riot by shouting from the back of the bus.  When I didn’t notice early enough to successfully deliver a telephone-style message to the front row, I just had to watch and hope it didn’t do too much damage.  One rogue bag jumped out without warning and landed smack dab on the head of the driver.  A collective “ooooohhhhh” rose from riders that could have been out of sympathy or because the bus was jolted when the driver was domed by 50 pounds of clothes.  Feeling like Troy Aikman after the 2000 NFL season, he parked the bus and got out to walk it off on the side of the road.  A woman sitting behind me thought it was a good time to pass her baby up the rows of people one by one and out the window to the driver who was still walking off his concussion.  The driver, without skipping a beat, grabbed the baby and put her down on the ground next to the whole bus as she peed behind a 2-inch wide tree.  Only in Africa.

This type of transportation took us 19 hours total from Lusaka, Zambia to Mangochi, Malawi, about 2 km away from the site of this year’s Lake of Stars.  With a 2 km walk with our bags ahead of us, we decided to throw our thumbs up and see if we could get picked up.  Within 30 seconds we were in the back of a truck laying on our bags and as comfortable as can be for the short trip into the concert grounds.

As smoothly as the hitchhiking went for the final leg of the journey to the concert, we decided that for the trip back home we would try to hitchhike the entire way- thinking it was going to be cheaper, more comfortable, and faster than taking the official transportation.

We threw our thumbs up on the side of the road and just as we had expected from our previous experience, a truck stopped within 30 seconds to pick us up. Happy as can be we set down our bags and laid down saying to each other what nice people Malawians were. 

Within 5 minutes we were asked to sit up and make room for more people.  Still comfortable, no big deal.  Then 5 minutes later, more people. 

Then more people and more people until it’s a standing room only ride in the back of a regular sized bed with 15 people all holding onto each other so that no one flies over the edge as we cruise at 40 miles an hour down the bumpy road.  I had what you could call front row seats to this ride of a lifetime.  This meant that I got to hold onto the top of the cab of the truck, but it also meant that I was the windshield for everyone behind me and over the course of the next 2 hours my glasses and beard turned into a bug graveyard. 

 Being in the front row also meant I was the one who had to answer the questions of “what was that noise?” from the rest of the group when we hit a guinea fowl (bowling ball shaped flightless bird about the size of a turkey) going about 50 miles an hour.  The faces that I got in response to that answer were the sort of surprised face you would have if you were in the bed of a truck that hit an animal going 50 miles per hour and without slowing down even a little to assess the situation, continued to go 50 mile per hour.

As we cruised into the black market gas station (because Malawi’s currency is powerless in other economies, they have a very difficult time getting foreign goods, including gasoline), we were asked for about as much money as we would have paid to take a bus.   3 hours later, the driver said we had reached as far as he would take us and we realized we had somehow gone at an even more painfully slow pace (probably because we kept requesting coconut stops) than we would have if we had taken the public transportation.  

With no improvement in safety or comfort and a growing bug graveyard in my beard, we decided we should just go the rest of the way on the public buses.  Conditions didn’t improve.  In fact, because we barely made it in a sprint onto the final bus back to Lilongwe, we got standing only tickets for the final 4 hour trip.

Sports Saves the World

Sports Illustrated recently published an article called “Sports Saves the World” and it features organizations that are using sports to tackle issues in the developing world.  Grassroot Soccer got a great feature story in it.  Its very cool to see that even though GRS is very much a grassroots movement and is on a smaller scale than many NGOs, the best organizations in the world are recognizing the effectiveness of community level work.  Our recent success cannot be refuted.  Here’s the link to the entire article:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1190627/1/index.htm

And the part about GRS:

PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA


Tommy Clark figured his sojourn in Zimbabwe to play pro soccer after college would be a joyous homecoming. He'd spent part of his teens in that southern African nation while his father, former Scotland international Bobby Clark, coached Highlanders F.C. in Bulawayo. But what he found upon returning in 1992 left him mystified and heartbroken. Seven of his dad's finest players—seemingly invincible footballers whom Tommy had idolized—were dead or dying. Worst of all, no one dared say why. "I was there for a year," says Clark, who also taught school and coached, "and I didn't have a single conversation about HIV."

Clark hit upon the idea of using soccer to break down this wall of silence and educate Africans about HIV. He embarked on a medical career, with a residency in pediatrics and a fellowship in HIV research in the U.S. In 2002, Clark launched Grassroot Soccer with three ex-Highlanders, including Ethan Zohn, the Survivor: Africa champion who donated a chunk of his $1 million prize money to the cause. Today the organization operates in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe and shares curriculum and resources with partners in nine other African countries. Studies confirm that graduates of the program wait longer to engage in sex; have fewer partners; and are more willing to talk about HIV with peers and relatives, take an HIV test and stay on treatment if they test positive. Those proven results have attracted such patrons as Elton John, whose AIDS foundation contributed $1.4 million last year to fund the program in Zambia. There's no way to tie the 50% drop in the HIV infection rate among South African teens from 2005 to '08 directly to Grassroot Soccer, but foundations are showing their confidence in the program with more grant money. This week the Clinton Global Initiative announced a $1 million commitment to a Grassroot program for South African girls.

Among the organization's most effective tools are the voluntary counseling and testing tournaments that it uses to reach the men who drive the disease. Clark invited me to a tournament in Motherwell, a township in the South African city of Port Elizabeth. For years locals had hidden behind euphemisms, saying of an HIV-positive woman, "She has a House in Veeplaas," a play on the name of a local neighborhood. But there had been a breakthrough a week before my visit, when South African president Jacob Zuma—a father of 22 children by multiple wives—announced the results of his own HIV test. (They were negative.)

The grounds outside a school teemed with players who ducked into a makeshift clinic between games, and Grassroot personnel touted a posttournament dance contest to flush more prospects out of a nearby supermarket. By the end of the day 289 more people knew their HIV status. "Five years ago, if you'd bring up HIV, everyone would shut down," one of the tournament workers, 27-year-old Mkadi Nkopane, told me. "Now a 10-year-old will tell you of an uncle or mother who's positive. The stigma will always be there, but it's much less now."

As the game that launches countless conversations in Africa, soccer is a natural idiom to cut through the taboos surrounding one of the continent's most pressing problems. In one popular drill, each soccer ball stands for a sexual partner. A player dribbling two balls is easily chased down by a defender who represents the AIDS virus; a player dribbling only one ball eludes that defender much longer, and a memorable point is made. Grassroot Soccer distributed thousands of "red cards" during the 2010 World Cup to help teenage girls, who can be up to eight times more likely to become infected than their male counterparts, use sass and humor to fend off unwanted sexual approaches. "The culture soccer creates around this topic is our 'secret sauce,' " says Grassroot Soccer COO Bill Miles. "By focusing on intergenerational sex and multiple partners, you try to shift social norms. And if you shift social norms, you change the epidemic."

Clark and his fellow ex-Highlanders work in part to honor the dead of Bulawayo—men such as the former star of the Zimbabwean national team who was refused service by bank tellers because of the stigma of AIDS, and the ex-player who trained as one of Grassroot Soccer's first coaches only to die before he could work with kids. "We're trying to be both bold and humble," says Clark, 40, whose program is nearly halfway toward its goal of a million youth participants by '14. "We ask for millions of dollars, and we're trying to change behavior and norms on a huge scale. But we also know we're not always going to have the answer, and that there may be a better answer tomorrow."