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Tumeliso Makhurane
If you have been invited to a workshop before, you must have a picture of a certain setting, white table cloths, nicely arranged chairs, some water and drinks on the tables and some well known speakers or facilitators.
However, a group of girls has proven that you can share information across ages and across perceived knowledge boundaries, using the barest minimum of resources and still achieve maximum impact.
Picture this. A five-litre cooking oil plastic container cut in half, an empty small canned fish tin, a couple of small stones, a dusty patch under some old sturdy tree to provide some shade and a cheerful housewife, some adolescents and a couple of teenagers and young mothers complete the cast of what is about to unfold.
The audience is called to order after a song to welcome visitors, of which I am part. Then a very young primary school girl calls for divine direction to the proceedings of the day after which the sister of the crowd steps forward to take us through the programme of the day.
With the participants’ ages ranging from 10 to 24, communication infused with entertainment seems to work very well.
Four volunteers are picked from the group and two stand on either side of the large container and small tin, armed with a heap of stones. The duo on one side attempt to score in the small tin, while the other pair propels its stones into the bigger container.
At the end of the round, after much giggling and misses, the girls attacking the bigger container score five against nothing for those attacking the smaller tin.
Sibongile Chikwee, a local housewife and the mentor of the Sista 2 Sista Club at Jenya Primary School, sums up the exercise after applauding the winners. The wider container, she says, represents the female sexual organ while the tiny tin represents the male sexual organ.
Due to their physical structure, women are more susceptible to HIV infection than males hence the need for girls to take care of themselves and avoid sex before marriage. A song follows to drive the point home. The children dance to the song whose lyrics designate particular body parts as sacred and out of bounds. Breasts, sexual organs and buttocks, are tapped by the children as they sing their song referring to the untouchables as seed kept for future use!
They hold these sessions once a week and in the three years of the programme, they have never had a school going member of the club falling pregnant, a common occurrence in the area, where herdboys prowl menacingly. To reach out to non-members, school assembly demonstrations and dramas are held to raise awareness on dangers of early sex and HIV and AIDS.
Chikwee says she attended trainings to sharpen her social awareness to prepare her to work with the children.
“You need to be a good listener and be able to reduce yourself to their level so that they can trust you and feel you are their friend and they can confide in you,” said Chikwee, who is so proud of her girls and wishes more could be done to assist the unemployed school leavers who still come for sessions. Some members are now married while some introduce her to their boyfriends and she counsels them to test for HIV before marriage.
The Sista 2 Sista Club initiative was introduced at Jenya Primary School in 2016 and three groups of 25 girls each were trained each year. The girls are taught on life skills, reproductive health and HIV and AIDS. The school lies in an area in Chivi District that is an HIV and AIDS hotspot, hence these interventions to catch them young.
One of the singers at the Jenya Primary School event believes she is well equipped to deal with life’s challenges courtesy of the Sista 2 Sista club sessions.
Internet Msingarabwi, a Form Three pupil at Jenya High School, and a Sista 2 Sista club member since Grade Five, is such a repository of wisdom, just like the worldwide web; and imparts such knowledge especially on life skills and HIV and AIDS to her peers.
There are 10 such Sista 2 Sista clubs in the district. Mostly girls from underprivileged backgrounds are selected to join the clubs since these are usually sexually exploited and end up falling pregnant early due to their desperate circumstances.
Chivi district’s HIV prevalence rate stands at 14 percent, the highest in the province whose prevalence rate is 12.8 percent.
The National Aids Council helps club members with sanitary pads and school provisions and plans are afoot to roll out Brother 2 Brother clubs in the district next year to ensure the boys are not left out in the fight against HIV.
“We have a target that 56 percent of the girls that we are working with should access HIV testing services. Since we give them lessons on basic sexual awareness, we expect them to go for cancer screening also.
“The mentor has one primary school age group and another for secondary school that also has young mothers,” said Youth Officer on the Sista 2 Sista programme, Efildah Tarakinu, who monitors the district activities and the sessions such as the one that we sat through.
Londile Moyo
Online Reporter