Health Education Modules: Tricks we've learned

In presenting the health education modules in the amputee camps, Katie and I have learned a bunch of tricks. This post is going to be all the tricks that I’ve learned or that Katie told me she learned, or that I noticed Katie uses effectively. She probably knows a bunch more that I just haven’t noticed. I’ll have to ask after I finish the list!

1. It’s planting season, so it’s better for us to gather as many people together at one time as possible and then for all four of us (Jalloh, Amhidu, Katie, me) to present together. Initially we were going house-by-house, with the goal of keeping the audiences small. The audiences were non-existent, so we switched to the group method. Another asset of the group method is that the entire community can here the questions that other community members ask.
2. There are some questions that get asked every time, and so we now incorporate those right into our presentation. For example, “Can you get HIV from a mosquito?” – No, although that is a perfectly valid, even insightful question. I think the reason why is that the mosquito ‘needle’ is far too small to carry enough virus to infect another person. We explain that the mosquito doesn’t inject any blood, because it wants all the blood for itself, and that malaria is specially suited to living in mosquitoes’ mouths, and that’s why you can get malaria but not HIV from a mosquito. The scientist in me makes a face when we say that, but I’d rather not start a trend of uninformed amputee camp members thinking that small exposures to HIV are okay...
Another common question in our teenage pregnancy section goes as follows: “What do you do if, even though you try and try and try to watch your pikin (child), they still run off with boys and do business (have sex)?” The answer: It’s really tough, but you have to have patience and teach them how to use and where to get condoms and birth control. I don’t have any more experience with that situation than most other 22 year old Canadian guys, so it feels weird to answer such a question, but it’s important nonetheless.
3. Our translators sometimes extemporize and go into the next part of the presentation before we say it in English. We’ve learned that it’s not a big deal; it’s only when people are asking questions that we demand precise translations. Otherwise, Amhidu and Jalloh act as good cultural as well as linguistic translators.
4. English acronyms don’t work in Krio. I’ve given up trying to explain the ABCD prevention system for HIV/AIDS (Abstain, Be faithful, use a Condom, Don’t use unsterilized skin piercing instruments). Instead I just explain and number each point.
5. It helps to position ourselves in the obvious exit to the space we have been given for teaching. That makes it much more difficult for people to wander out when they get bored.
6. Similarly, learning a couple of names can go a long way. When a person whose name you know tries to slink away, we just call out nicely and they usually come right back.
7. The order of presentation needs to be flexible to the situation. For example, a fight nearby once attracted fifteen or twenty teens and preteens. We called them all over and immediately cut to the teen pregnancy section.
8. Make sure that all audience members are in the shade and will be in the shade throughout the presentation. Otherwise they will leave when the sun reaches them.
9. Learning and then using some of the Kono vocabulary for our modules always gets a big laugh and wakes up the audience. Katie does this very well. For example, she always uses ‘chima’, the Kono word for fever.

That’s all for now. Tomorrow morning Katie and I are presenting in the Motemas, the last two camps. We’re not sure whether that will take one or two days, but soon we will be changing over to the surveys that we will use to assess how much the amputee communities retained the information in our modules.