Et Le Navire Va: HIV/AIDS Misconception

Wednesday-Friday, October 24-26, 2012 – HIV/AIDS Misconceptions

For the second half of training today we did a scavenger hunt. Basically, it was a bunch of questions about Cameroonian culture, history, and languages. We didn’t go anywhere, but were able to answer them all by talking to our language teachers and the other Cameroonian staff. It was pretty interesting.

After school I went home and interviewed my little brother on his AIDS/HIV knowledge. It’s amazing how little he knows at 14 in a country with such a high percentage of the population infected – or at least the misconceptions he has. He literally thinks that you can get it from saliva, that a doctor can tell if you have it with a stethoscope, and that Chinese condoms have AIDS inside them already. He doesn’t even know how condoms work. Of course he’s not allowed to talk to his parents about it, it’s taboo. I think I’m going to talk to them and see if they will let me talk to him, teach him some of the real facts, at least how to put a condom on. Not everything he said was wrong, but it gave me a clearer picture of the challenges I will be facing then just hearing them in class. It sounds like other people that I talked to didn’t talk to people with the same misconceptions.

The girl from the second season of Breaking Bad is really hot. Nothing else on that front, just saying.

Friday

We did our first presentations in French yesterday; I did mine on how to make a Juicy Lucy. It went well, but now I really want a hamburger. I definitely need to get some more practice in French in though, and probably should have made some visuals.

My stomach has been killing me the last couple of days, I really hope it starts feeling better because we are going on our one-day field trip today. This will be the only time that YD will get to be in a hotel together, and I want to drink and have fun with everyone. I’ve been taking this prescription that my buddy’s dad got me before our trip to Timor-Leste, so hopefully those start helping.

For our trip we are going to the capital of the West Region, Bafoussam, and another town that I can’t remember the name of. We will be visiting an orphanage and a museum. Basically Peace Corps isn’t sure what to do with YD, because it sounded like the stuff Health was doing on their field trip would be really good for our sector too. I’m a little upset that Health and Environment both get 3-5 days for their field trip and we only get one, but I guess we’re a new program, so what are you going to do.

I can’t remember if I said this, but a girl here gave me her extra Nook cord and now it works! I was able to load all of the books I got from other people onto it, which is really exciting. Unfortunately I forgot to charge it last night or bring the new cord, so hopefully it keeps its charge during this trip. I’m reading The Wastelands right now, the third in the Dark Tower series, which is pretty much my favorite series. I wanted to re-read it because Stephen King came out with a new installment in it (which I’ve heard isn’t very good), but it really just gave me an excuse to read it all again. I’m not sure what to read next, I was thinking Necromancer by William Gibson. We’ll see.