June 5, 2011
Well I just got back from a full week in Rabat, the capital city of Morocco and home to Peace Corps Headquarters. Arriving last Saturday, the work week started with a Sunday-Monday ToT (Training of Trainers), where we were the ones being trained to work a health table at the Gnaoua music festival in Essouiara at the end of this month. The training was run very well and focused on talking points for advocating anti-huffing and convincing people to get tested for HIV and other STIs (a service we will be able to provide on site with the help of the Moroccan NGO ALCS). I had a free day on Tuesday that was spent on the beach, where I went kayaking and played capoeira. Wednesday was my Mid Service Medical Exam that went smoothly with the exception of a brief torn meniscus scare that was resolved with a clear MRI. That night I moved in to an extremely fancy hotel for training on HIV/AIDS (SIDA in French) related projects (a normal price for a double room at hotels I stay at costs around 150Dh this one cost 1700Dh!).
All the PCVs at the training brought one or two Moroccan counterparts with them whom they hope to work on a SIDA project with back in their sites. This was a great opportunity to talk candidly about HIV/AIDS, the transmission of the virus, and the misconceptions about the virus held by many Moroccans. The nurse I have become friends with in Boumia, Abdlrahim, met up with me in Rabat and actually ended up being the only counterpart there with a medical background. The training covered a lot over the three days including what I’ve already mentioned as well as project planning and design. The most interesting part was our “field trip” to Casablanca on Friday to meet with Association du Jour, an HIV/AIDS association started by HIV+ Moroccans that provides support to people living with the virus. Two of their more impressive services are free counseling by a professional psychologist, and a boarding house where people from outside Casablanca can stay while they have medical appointments. This was the first time almost all of the Moroccans in our group, as well as many of the volunteers, had met HIV+ people, their reactions during discussion the next day very interesting. The most universal one was the realization that there is no way to tell from looking at someone if they have HIV. So many doctors and other health professionals here talk about symptoms of the illness that you can see, so our counterparts assumed they would see at least some of these signs, but there were none, the people were just like them. Another take away was that everyone is at risk not just poor people.
To close the training we all worked on project planning for our own sites. Abdlrahim and I partnered with Margo and her counterpart Zineb from Itzer (a town with very similar problems as mine and only 20 minutes away). We will begin organizing activities in Itzer first since there has been data collected on condom sales, which will be our baseline to measure success from. At the same time we will begin the same data collection in Boumia before engaging in projects so as to measure success rate. With Abdlrahim fully engaged as he is in the project, and the desire of Zineb to work on issues in Itzer I have high hopes for this work to start moving along. I am very excited to finally have what feels like real work to be doing. The challenge of increasing condom usage is great but I think we can at least start to make some sort of impact.
