We had the Mahonda youth come up with a drama to perform at Ushujaa last Saturday. For the volunteers, that was our last Ushujaa and we thought it would be great to end it off by inviting the Mahonda youth to come out to Mwanakwerekwe. The drama that the youth put together was based on the themes of substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, and stigma. Juma a.k.a. J. Doss (his music artist name) sang a song about how we should not stigmatize those who are infected with HIV/AIDS. As I've mentioned before, the Mahonda youth are very interested in HIV/AIDS peer educating. Unfortunately, the youth in Mwanakwerekwe were not very receptive to this drama. Because the drama was all in Swahili, we couldn't really tell if the comments or the calls from people in the crowd were in support of the drama or not. But then Carlos told me that it was going really bad and that they crowd "does not have good behavior". Juma didn't understand why the crowd was making fun of them and the rest of the group looked really discouraged. Catherine and I told them that for the group to perform a drama on HIV/AIDS infront of their peers in a society where HIV/AIDS is so stigmatized takes a lot of courage. We also explained that not everyone will agree or be receptive to your message either because they don't understand or it's an uncomfortable issue for them. However, the only way to try and change that is for each individual and the group to continue to be vocal about these issues to increase awareness about substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.
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