Let's Talk About Sex.

This week I went to another volunteer's (Steve's) village to do an HIV/AIDS & other STI workshop with his recently formed youth group. In typical Fijian fashion, it was postponed from Thursday to Friday due to a church session that went two hours past when it was supposed to...but eventually we did have the workshop, and I was incredibly impressed by the way the youth interacted and took seriously the issue.

You see friends, in this culture talking about sex is taboo, so usually the first thirty minutes of any workshop having to do with anything remotely related to sex is a bunch of giggling and uncomfortable twitching...occassionally some comments about how I, the facilitator should practice condom use on one of the male participants. His youth group was completely opposite. From the beginning they were interested, asked intelligent questions, and took part in all activities.

Around the grog bowl we discussed things like what HIV stands for (the first guess for "H" was homosexual" so we cleared up that myth on the spot, discussing that HIV happens to everyone and in Fiji of the 300 reported cases, less than 10 are the result of homosexual relationships), how it's transmitted, what the risk is in various sexual activities as well as the villager tattooing that is a cultural norm here, how we can tell if someone has it (FYI, you can't. testing.testing.testing people), and how to prevent it.

I realized at the end how much I take confidential health care in America for granted. The biggest concern for the youth in getting condoms is that the health center they would normally get them at is the employment center for others in the village as well as relatives and as soon as they accessed this free service, the entire village would know. They plan on talking further about how to confidentially access condoms...the most viable option seems like when they take a trip to Suva two hours away they will go to the adolescent reproductive health center there because they can be assured of confidentiality.

Next week is a busy one, the youth theatre group at FRIEND begins performances, my roomate moves in, and I go on several dives over the weekend...