I haven’t given many causeries so far in my service for a number of reasons. In villages, random groups of people can easily be seen, or at least gathered quickly, under mango trees for short lessons. But in my city, people tend to ignore their neighbors and sit, isolated, inside their fenced in compounds all day long. They’re also not exactly thirsting for a lot of my “expertise” here: most of the people I encounter in Thies are pretty well aware of health issues like nutrition, malaria, diabetes, and yes, even sex. Take for instance this conversation I recently had with my host mother:
Mom: I’m worried about your sister. She wants to divorce her husband.
Lisa: Hmm. Yes. Why would that worry you? In America, a lot of women don’t get divorced because it’s hard to raise their children on their own. Is that what you mean?
Mom: No, you ridiculous fool. We live in a communal society. Obviously, that baby would be taken care of. I’m worried about your sister because she’s just going to get knocked up again! She is stuck in a vicious cycle where men flirt with her and she feels alone so she has sex with them hoping they will love her without thinking if they will be good husbands and then she winds up having kids out of wedlock! It’s like come on girl, use the planning methods we all know about! Duh!
So yeah, needless to say, people get things here, such as the destructive cycle of yearning for love and unwanted pregnancy, even if they don’t always use that information consistently. They don’t need little American Lisa waltzing around explaining how the cold world works. They get it. Also, they definitely don’t need Lisa stumbling through her child-like Wolof as she tries to prove a point. I’m pretty sure when I think I say things like, “You need to eat vegetables and fish while you are pregnant so that your baby grows up strong, healthy, and smart,” I end up sounding like “You eating vegetables! Fish! Baby make big! Not stupid! Never have diarrhea and die!” They get it, but advice from a stuttering Wolof-speaking foreigner might not always have my desired effect.
So, when my neighbor Chelsea asked me to give a talk about condoms in her village, I immediately tried to find a contingency plan. I figured I would need more than this:
So I went to Plan, my workplace, which employs a boatload of Senegalese field agents to teach lessons in rural communities. So Chelsea and I picked our teacher, briefed her on what we wanted from the talk, and counted down the days until we’d get to throw condoms in the air like a ticker tape parade. Or just nonchalantly leave the box out so that people could grab them without judgment while no one was looking.
Along the way, we hit a few stumbling blocks. For one, our teacher wanted to get paid, a concept foreign to us Peace Corps volunteers who are used to everything being free... and with a smile! So negotiations needed to be had. I may have gotten a little sassy, but who doesn’t get sassy when it comes to giving good information about preventing chlamydia?! We also had to iron out the lesson plan a little bit: most people are happy to talk about how condoms prevent AIDS but far less enthused about their contraceptive potential. Chelsea and I really wanted birth control stressed in the lesson. Birth control is often thought of a woman’s issue in America (*cough... at least when weird laws aren’t in the middle of being passed... excuse me, I seem to be choking on the sonograms being shoved down everyone’s throats these days in America SORRY DONE BEING POLITICAL), but here, men make a lot of those choices. So we wanted someone to nonjudgmentally speak about different options, benefits, and detriments, at the very least condoms and birth spacing.
Also, right before I trekked out to the village, I stumbled upon on all of these model penises! So exciting, right?! Chelsea, who had spent most of her morning being mocked by the banana we were going to use to demonstrate how to put on a condom, was especially excited because now she got to have a snack. These aspirationally terrifying penises changed everything.
The villagers welcomed us warmly, making fun of our last names and giving us mats to sit on. One joking asked me for a present and I told him I brought the gift of knowledge! It’s the best party gift because not only does it keep giving, but you can also use it as a weapon.
It took awhile for the men to show up for the talk, but as soon as she had an audience, our teacher went for it. The experience was really cool for me in a lot of ways. I had attended similar health talks in Uganda, where I had no idea what was happening at any given moment. But here, I realized how much Wolof I actually do know. I was easily able to follow the conversation and even chime in at certain points, reaffirming that blood tests for AIDS can lead to easy treatment and a long life. I also went on a little bit of a tangent about the necessity of properly disposing medical waste, which is a deep fear for my friend Mary. A group of older men was heavily involved in the discussion, agreeing with the teacher on many points and asking a lot of questions. The younger teenagers sat in the corner and tended to giggle a lot, but you know what? They stayed the whole time. Don’t worry boys, your secret is safe with me – I won’t tell anyone that you were actually deeply curious about condoms and gobbled up the knowledge like it was a straight up Korite meal.
At the end of the talk, Chelsea revealed to me that the most active participant during the talk had actually been her imam, the religious leader of the village. On the whole, Senegalese imams tend to be as conservative as one would expect the holiest of holy men in Muslim West Africa to be: very much so. So it bodes pretty awesomely that her imam was so fired up about condoms. And everyone loved their party favors, aka condoms!
I loved having an atypical day where I did typical Peace Corps work, the kind of run-of-the-mill thing that most village volunteers do regularly. The morning of the condom talk, I had helped train new volunteers in behavior change, teaching them that creating healthy patterns needs so much more than just lessons, talks, and visual aids. And it’s true: talks about penises probably won’t change much. But it’s definitely a start. And sometimes, it’s just nice to get out of town and get some work done with your three penis models.
So here’s to condoms! May they infiltrate the villages all around me with their responsible ways! Maybe someday I will have another talk like this one. Until then, I’ll keep making my host sister take vitamins with my strange pantomimes and multi-language hernias of the mouth.
And for further reading, check out this article about endangered species condoms... the craze sweeping the nation so that endangered species can sweep the world!
