Meeting Travel Africa

So his dream was realised in early 2003 when he had selected his team of 20 volunteers from various parts of the UK. He put my dream of doing charity work into reality by including me in that team. I’m Jacilda, Jay to my friends and by now, half of Africa as a result of my involvement in Tackle Africa. Each of these 20 young people, whose careers varied from dentists and nurses, television producers and chefs, to students and graduates, each contributed a personal donation of £3,500 and from that point the money and donations started coming in as a result of the volunteers getting in touch with local press, businesses and football leagues in their areas. The English Football Association even helped set up a kit amnesty for donated football kit that we could distribute to the less well off schools we would be visiting in Africa. With some of this money the flight tickets and the overland trucks were paid for and Tackle Africa were off on the move, seen off at the airport in London by lots of press and “Mr Sven Goran Erikkson”.

Tackle Africa flew to Tangiers in Morocco at the end of September 2003 to be met by Adam who was to be their driver for the next three months in an overland truck supplied by Nomad Expeditions. We knew our first event wasn’t due to start for 8 days so this meant that we had a day or two for relaxing by the beach in Morocco and getting over our jet-lag before making a potentially six day trip down through Mauritania and the Western Sahara to Senegal. Were we excited??? Personally, I couldn’t wait. Sure, the beach was appealing but as ominous and uncomfortable looking as the truck was, as soon as we were on it, I felt then we would really get to know one another. Also there was nothing like being thrown in at the deep end from the start with a six day trip of roughing it on the truck for us to find out whether or not we could get along and keep it together. So we stocked up on supplies and “African golddust” (commonly known in the Western world as bog roll), at what we thought would be the last big supermarket we’d see until East Africa and then we hit the road.

Well, this was a perfect introduction to the road and bush-camping part of our trip but now it was down to business. We were to carry out events in the predominantly French speaking countries of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon. This meant that many of our group were going to be silent participants but with three months in West Africa it was anticipated that everyone would pick up enough French to get by. We were told that our work would involve us in the participation of football events and visiting local schools in mostly rural areas where we would enter classrooms and give question and answer sessions on HIV and AIDS and encourage discussions on AIDS related problems. Given that most of the students wouldn’t speak English this meant we really would need the help of our partners to translate more complex questions and answers.

Our first event was in Louga, in Senegal and here we were treated to our first “Cultural Soirée” where we were the guests of honour. This was a taster for us of what the next six months would be like. When I say we were the guests of honour I’m not kidding! We were led to the centre of a crowd of several hundred spectators and announced by the compeer on the rickety old PA system like we were the champion prize fighters in a title match – in this case it really was good verses evil, charity workers verses HIV and AIDS. They say reality bites and it bit me in our first classroom visit when we discovered the significant cultural differences between someone from the UK and these young Africans who were subjected to a life of never-ending tradition which meant that at the age of twelve, most of the girls had already had some sort of sexual experience, usually at the hands of a family member and most of the young boys had been put at risk of HIV or AIDS by being circumcised with dirty equipment in the beliefs of their tribal traditions. Christian Aid workers had advised us to expect this when we were back in the UK but they hadn’t been able to prepare us for how we would feel seeing these young people and there acceptance of this way of life as the norm. It only took me a few school visits to realise that this was indeed normal and that I would just have to roll with it or come up with a damn good reason for them to break from tradition. HIV and AIDS were the good reason but getting them to believe that AIDS actually existed and that it was a global killer with no cure was going to be a hard argument to pitch to people who didn’t have the media advice and influence of someone who lived in the UK. Furthermore, young people here weren’t as open in discussions with their parents as we were in the UK. To challenge a long-standing tradition wouldn’t be seen as mature or opinionated but rather as downright insolent.

My eyes were opened even more with the arrival of my friend Paul Kelly (PK) in Bamako, Mali. An Irish student from Cardiff who was doing a comparison in HIV and AIDS studies between the UK and Africa was joining up with us to work on his photographic documentary for just over a month and a half. My job, as his friend, was to be his guide and translator (and tent buddy) at the various places we would visit and speak to doctors and health advisors and PLWHA’s (people living with HIV and Aids). This was for me something separate and away from Tackle Africa but even more intense. Our first outing was in Mopti (Sevare), Mali, where we visited a local testing and advice centre. We spoke to the doctor there, and asked him how the community treated him and the centre and whether or not the opinions of people in the community were changing and if more people believed HIV and Aids was real. I didn’t expect the answer he gave. He said that most people would just eliminate disease to something as trivial such as colds and flues or malaria. The scary thing was that in most AIDS cases they would be correct. Because Aids related deaths usually occur when a person’s immune system has totally broken down and they do then die of something simple such as the cold. Convincing people that you could live with a killer disease in your system for many years just wasn’t as straightforward as it sounded. For this particular doctor it was simpler just to treat their short term sickness and send them on their way until the next time. Poverty was another major problem because either the country itself couldn’t afford to produce anti-retroviral and so would have to by them more expensively on the international market, or the individuals just couldn’t afford to buy them. Sometimes in the case of women, commercial sex would be the only way to raise funds for treatment such as this, so you can appreciate the vicious circle here. The best of it was, they had glossed over their terms for commercial sex over recent years by changing it from “prostitution” to “sex worker” to “adult entertainer” to try and not make it sound as bad. This last term got me, because most of the “adult entertainers” that I saw couldn’t have even been sixteen years old!

As Paul and I travelled around different centres in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana I got a little bit depressed. It was frustrating and heartbreaking for me talking to individuals who in some cases were PLWHA’s and not being able to help them. Because Paul and I were taking an interest in them and their lives and because we were white, they thought we were in a position to give them some sort of life-saving financial support. For example, in the case of Daniel, a man whom we met in Ghana whose life and that of his fourteen year old daughter, had been tossed upside down upon discovering completely by accident that he was HIV positive. His whole family had disowned him and his business as a clothing salesman had gone bankrupt. Paul, a student, and me, a chef, were hardly the multi-millionaires they needed. As I got more and more upset at my uselessness and the futility of what we were doing, reality jumped up and took another chunk out of me. We were in Accra, Ghana and Paul and I were visiting a school with Michellina, a peer educator who worked for the Christian Council of Ghana. She took us as spectators to one of her “Virgin Clubs” where a group of young people had formed a club where they were all virgins or abstaining from sexual relationships in an effort to stop HIV spreading. As Paul and I fielded their questions about sexual differences and experiences between our two generations in the UK and Africa, it was then that I realised that us, Tackle Africa, Paul and I in our capacity as young people – not as doctors or scientists, had one tool and one tool only for fighting HIV and Aids. The best form of cure is prevention and the pen is mightier than the sword, supposedly, so I don’t know why my personal feelings had stopped me seeing this before. I suddenly realised that all the money in the world couldn’t stop this disease or help the 30 million people in Africa already living with HIV. All we could do was try and change the attitudes of as many young people as we could by giving speeches and bringing the next generation together to fight the disease and its spread. And I kick-started this change of attitude with myself and went on to enjoy the most eye-opening and awakening experience of my life. I only hope that anyone who reads and sees the work that Paul produced in Africa will feel a little bit of what we experienced through pictures and help everybody to live positively…

text by Jacilda Slevin

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