I've Got Soul, But I'm Not a Soldier: SIDA and Gnaoua

So June happened. Apparently I missed my cue and totally blanked on updating this blog for the past month. My bad. I'll give you the same excuses for my absence as I gave my Mudir and see if you find them more compelling than he. Then we'll move on to more riveting information.

The first week of June was spent in Rabat doing a SIDA (AIDS) training for an upcoming (and now passed) Gnaoua festival in Essaouira. The second week of June was spent in Madrid initially dreading and ultimately conquering the GRE. The third week was spent in Marrakech with around 25 other PCVs conducting our first regional meeting under the new format PC Morocco will now be operating by. The last week was spent in Essaouira with nearly a hundred other PCVs enjoying the annual Gnaoua festival. I have since returned to Sedona-miz, enjoyed a few visiting PCVs' company, and sweat more than I have in the last six months combined.

The focus of the month, though, was indeed the Gnaoua festival in Essaouira. Regular readers are aware of my undying affection for this city, so any opportunity to venture westward is a welcome one. Last year, I took some vacation days and enjoyed the festival to its fullest, which mostly meant sun, sand, and unwelcome gestures from unusually high & drunk male attendees. I opted to work the festival this year, balance out my play time with my work time, get my PC karma in line and all. Turned out to be a great decision as I had a wonderful and truly rewarding time doing so.

Peace Corps Morocco has worked with a Moroccan based NGO for the last few years in order to address the target population present at this festival in regeards to AIDS and (this year) STI education. ALCS - Association de Lutte Contra le SIDA, is active nation wide, in more than 12 cities, combating myths and poor education in regards to HIV and STI risk. Our organizations (I'm tempted to fall into Captain Planet rhetoric here... when our powers combine... the power is yours!) have traditionally come together during this festival in order to have the maximum presence possible to reach target festival goers. This year we had over thirty volunteers participate in this education outreach program.

Our primary focus while on duty consisted of canvassing the boardwalk in front of the ALCS pop-up tents. The NGO was offering free HIV testing in addition to free condoms and pamphlets with further disease related information. It should be noted that, naturally, there is little to no sex education present in Morocco. With it being an Islamic Kingdom, 98.7% of its population assumed to be Muslim, there is this nationwide facade that everyone lives by Muslim law, thus no one has sex out of wedlock, no one here would go to a prostitute, and why should I wear a condom? I'm not at risk!, etc etc. The general public knows what 'SIDA' is, and they know it's 'bad', but they don't always know where it comes from, how it's contracted, and what the consequences are. Furthering the point, even though they might have an idea of what SIDA is, next to no one knows what an STI is, let alone that they exist. Thus, this year Peace Corps helped ALCS put together Morocco's first ever STI pamphlet. Albeit, it was mostly cartoon condoms asking each other what these weird symptoms are and what they should tell their doctor, it was definitely a step in the right direction.

The week definitely started out weird though, those first couple stops were super awkward for all of us. I mean, here we are, a bunch of American kids, speaking comprehensive but still messy Arabic, Tash, & Tam, approaching who we assume to be reasonably devout Muslims with lines like 'Hey, you have a minute to talk about AIDS?', 'If you need some free condoms, go that way!', 'It only takes 20 minutes to get tested in that van over there!' I mean, I would have though we were crazy. Lo and behold though, the public came a runnin' and we tested over 600 festival goers, handed out over 5,500 condoms, and spoke to at least double that number. It was surprisingly much more gratifying than I ever thought it could have been.

Mid-shift one afternoon, though, I definitely pondered what had been more difficult: Months spent canvassing the streets of a republican Orange County with Greenpeace about the current risks to the environment? Or a week spent trawling the beach front of an Islamic Morocco educating locals about HIV? At least the former was in English.