Teaching young people about HIV/AIDS

Miranda Rhymer talks about her time on a youth exchange in Malawi.

Map of Malawi (from the BBC website)

Last year I spent three weeks in Malawi, Africa, along with nine other young women plus three leaders, all from Edinburgh. We planned to deliver education workshops on sexual health to Malawian young people. This is because the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in Malawi is a huge problem.

After arriving in Malawi our group was a little shell-shocked because everything there was so different compared to Scotland. The trees and plants were very unusual and there were goats and chickens everywhere! You can see poor people and poverty in every direction. There were lots of little huts and half-built houses. People were walking with baskets on their heads and no shoes. Lots of people were begging on the side of the dusty road, especially children. I could see so many coffin shops all around, but lots of beautiful mountains in the background.

I had seen poverty on Comic Relief and on Oxfam adverts on the television, but I was still unprepared for what I saw. We often had pizza in a restaurant called Ali Baba's where the street children would wait outside to see if anyone had left small scraps of food behind. On our first visit to this restaurant we collected all the left over food in take-away boxes and gave it to the children standing outside who said they would "share share". By the time we had walked the 20 yards to the mini-bus there were people begging outside it. This was really upsetting, especially seeing a man who had no hands. We should be grateful for everything we have because we have so much more than the people here.

Malawi is different from Scotland in several ways. We visited a primary school called the Henry Henderson Institute. The classrooms were dark and overcrowded and I found it very strange to see the children sitting on the ground. There were 66 boys and 32 girls registered for that class. The children used bottle tops as counters for maths, which shows how much these people make use of everything they have. The people in the rural villages were very friendly and welcoming. They seemed so cheerful even though they have nothing. In Scotland everyone is always complaining.

After getting to know Malawi the group made a start on the education classes. At one school we visited, we were told the session would be with a class of about 40-50 students. But the head teacher thought that the whole school would benefit from our session - about 500 people! The students brought up many myths concerning sexual health. Some of the myths came up again at a number of schools and villages, which shows that these were common misconceptions amongst the Malawian young people.

At another school, the teacher made things more difficult for us. He believed "the West should lower the cost of drugs instead of making condoms" and that "caring for people with HIV/AIDS encouraged others to contract it." There are lots of myths about sexual health in Malawi and we can provide the correct information, but it will not always change things.

At first I thought that the lack of knowledge in Malawi was so different to that of Scottish young people, but on reflection I have realised that I have also heard some of the same myths back home in Scotland. This is a problem in both Malawi and Scotland. On our return from Malawi, we carried out workshops in local schools around Edinburgh, to educate young people about sexual health and about our experiences in Malawi.

The whole experience really changed me as a person. It has boosted my confidence and my self-esteem. The youth exchange has made me want to become an English teacher and get more involved with organisations such as Unicef or Oxfam, so that I can help other people living in Third World countries like Malawi.