Guachupita

What a really fulfilling day. We visited some wonderful young people of Guachupita, a poor barrio that receives bad publicity in the Dominican press. However, we found the 30 young people we worked with to be intelligent, friendly and interested in the AIDS message (whenever I told people that we were going into Guachupita their faces were aghast). Their visceral reactions put a scare in Maryna but I told her I had visited the barrio in both 1992 and 1993 as part of my doctoral research and never had problems and was always warmly welcomed.  Perhaps earlier today we all had a modicum of trepidation, but deep down I knew there was nothing to fear.

We were warmly greeted by Lino Arturo Castro, the director of the youth center, "La Red Jovenes Unidos de Guachupita," that has been in existence for 7 years. Now folks, this group deserves financial support from our TeenAIDS' friends. They try to do an awful lot with few resources; a story that I well understand from my 17 years at the helm of TeenAIDS. Starting around 4:15 on a warm Thursday afternoon the young people began to arrive in pairs.  I greeted them at the main door of the center that opens onto massive outdoor basketball court. Sam gave them our Spanish business cards.  Maryna was temporarily absent because she went with Chelo our driver to buy minutes for our two in-country cell phones. An hour earlier, it was embarrassing when one cell phone died during a difficult conversation with somebody that I had a disagreement with.  I am sure that they thought that I just hung up on them. The confusion was later straightened out with the new phone minutes.

Most of the young people were between the ages of 15 and 19 with some younger and a few as old as 24. The young women sat together on one side of the room painted in a pale yellow and the young men sat together in the other 2/3 of the seats. With the help of Carlos a young neighborhood translator, I began my spiel in my broken Spanglish but soon left the translation to Carlos. I went through some of the transmission roots and explained what was safe and what was high risk. I also told them that if they do not have sex they will not get HIV/AIDS through its sexual route. Yet if they engage in unprotected sexual intercourse the danger will be higher. They all knew about condoms (condones). I said that I had a few questions that I wanted them to answer with their permission. I asked the boys "at what age do you think that most Dominican males begin sex;" one said 12 but most boys said 13-15.  From the girls' side of the room a few were quite vocal and retorted, " No, 18." So I asked the girls the same questions and the group seemed to defer to one young woman, who also said 18 while a few boys were yelling "no 12, 13."

I explained that sex is a personal choice. I recommended that they wait or postpone first sex as long as they could and used the analogy of Russian roulette forming my hand into a gun and doing the action of spinning the barrel and pointed to my head pulled the trigger. Nothing happened because the chamber was empty. The second time, the same result, but the third time -- I made the noise "bang" and said that that is how HIV occurs.

I have found that boys and girls are concerned about getting AIDS because they believe that it will hurt an awful lot when they die.  So I put it into a different perspective. I query, "How are you going to feel when you go to the hospital and the doctor says congratulations, you have a baby girl/boy -- but unfortunately it was born with AIDS?  Then I looked all of them in the eyes and said, "You don't want to be responsible for that heavy burden."

I told the story of the orphanage in South Africa that was once a large school gymnasium. The room was filled with row upon row of baby cribs, each with 3 or 4 infants, all of whom were diagnosed HIV positive and many of whom were dying. There were only a few wet nurses who could barely keep up with feeding them once a day due to the sheer number.  Imagine how these young babies were deprived of even simple human touch - because of something their parents gave them.  It was an overwhelming memory for me and the young people were silent contemplating the tragic scenario.  I remember one emaciated baby girl's face peering out, little hands holding on to the bars of the crib. I went over to this young child of perhaps a year old and she reached out to grab my finger and tugged on it. I patted her head and as I exited the large space I glanced back and saw the baby standing and staring at me. And then it struck me.  The infant looked like a prisoner behing bars, for in fact, she was.

I then introduced the idea of doing AIDS theater, "Theatro de SIDA." We will talk about this in another blog.

Dr. John