Gambibgo Testing Event

I’m about three weeks behind on blogging so bear with me as I try to catch up to present day events. The weekend after Ed left to go back to America I went to help another Upper East volunteer with an HIV testing event in his village. Dennis, an Agriculture volunteer, lives in Gambibgo just outside of Bolga. Since I’m the GhAP (Ghana AIDS Project- our HIV Committee) rep for our region, he asked me back in November asking how to go about planning such an event since one of the nurses at his clinic approached him about doing one. He started working on a grant then and throughout the process I tried my best to assist him by answering questions and offering advice. So I was really happy to be able to go and witness the actual event on 12 January.

The morning was a bit of a rush with Dennis and the former counterpart of a PCV going around town picking up the rental equipment in a big truck. Chairs, sound system equipment, tents, water, and snacks were all loaded up and taken to his village. It took a while to setup and in typical Ghana fashion the event was late starting but the three nurses who were doing the testing got started anyways since people were waiting. Plus that was the most important part of the event- everything else was to attract people and educate them. Since the venue was the primary school there were a ton of kids around. One of the activities for the event was cultural dancing. One of the masters at the primary school runs a cultural club and teaches/helps the kids practice local dances. The boys opened with some drumming, fluting and dancing on their own while the girls warmed up. Then the girls, ranging from small to practically grown girls, paraded out and did their dances. I think my favorite aspect was the fact that most of the kids had on matching costumes- love it! I took a ton of photos and videos and really enjoyed the cultural display.

By this time a ton of people were in line to get tested and really there was a steady stream all day. There was one woman with a baby on her back that I greeted when we first arrived since she’d been waiting to get tested. After she got tested she was really into dancing- while I went to go buy rice she was dancing around and the lady selling the rice explained to me that she’s happy because now she knows how to protect herself from getting HIV. I tried to get a good photo of her smiling while dancing because she wore this infectious smile but wasn’t able to. But it’s still a great success story!

Later in the afternoon, two local football teams played a match for the event. During halftime the organizing nurse Kennedy did a condom demonstration for the teams and the crowd. During the second half of the game, some local adult drummers started surrounding first Dennis and then me. This is a common practice because if they drum ‘for you’ they expect money from you. It’s happened to me in my village a few times and still embarrasses me- as if I don’t already stick out enough I usually try to avoid extra attention. Dennis’ expression when I walked up to find him with the drummers all around was hilarious and I was cracking up. But soon I experienced the same phenomenon. And I literally had 1 cedi in my pocket because all my stuff was in Dennis’ house besides a tiny amount of spending money I had on me. I decided if I couldn’t get them to leave me alone I might as well join them so I got to do a little drumming myself. Later Dennis paid them for their music at his event and then they were happy. Back to the football, at the end of the game the two teams both received drinks, snacks, a new football, and a box of condoms. I think they were most excited about the condoms.

About this time we were about to get setup for the film show when the lights went out. The budget had included money for a generator but it wasn’t rented since the electricity had been fairly stable- oops. Everyone waited for a while hoping the power would come back on but it didn’t until later in the night so breakdown of all the equipment commenced. I think Dennis and I were rather glad we finished early since we were both exhausted but it was unfortunate people didn’t get to see the films. When we got back to the family compound where Dennis stays his family wanted to watch them so Dennis setup his laptop outside for them. The film was in their local language Fra-fra with English subtitles (you can imagine the quality of those) so much of the time I had no idea what was really happening meanwhile Dennis’ family was laughing loudly. Sometimes humor doesn’t necessarily translate well. Or maybe the translation just wasn’t very well done. Either way his family loved the film and it was a nice end to a very successful day. We weren’t sure how successful it was until later in the week. 356 people were tested (many were children) and 2 people were found to be HIV positive. I hope and pray that those 2 people receive the support they need to seek treatment in order to live healthy and happy lives. It was great to take part in my first testing event and I learned a lot to help with the next Upper East testing event a short time later. More on that next time…