11/8/2010: Boatmen Condom Distribution Training in Atjoni

"I'm a business volunteer. I wasn't trained to use a female condom. And these directions are in Saramaccan, not English..."--an 'Oh Crap!' moment

A day over two years in the making. To the best of my knowledge this idea started as a small, informal project a year before I arrived in Gunzi with the previous volunteer. The idea was to train local boatmen, store owners and women in HIV/AIDS education and have them distribute condoms within their villages. I had heard about the project and thought it was a great idea and I wanted to go forward with it. When I arrived in Gunzi my starting point was an excel file left for me on the Tei Wei computers. The file was a contact list of 5 men and 1 woman. I would later find out that two other men had been trained, or at least said they had been trained as well.

During my first year of service, on trips to the city I would set aside a morning to walk the long mile from Stadz, my usual city lodging, to National AIDS Program (NAP) and back. NAP is the organization in the city who usually will give me as many free condoms as I want and can lug across town. I've brought as many as two thousand condoms from the city to the interior in one trip. That time the condoms were sent with another Peace Corps Volunteer in a neighboring village and I had to walk to his village, pick up 2,000 condoms and walk 30 minutes through the jungle and over 4 creeks before arriving back in my village with the condoms. A resume builder, clearly. Once the condoms were at my house in Gunzi I would distribute them to the several contacts I had inherited. Meanwhile, I was travelling the river, talking with boatmen who gave me rides, drinking beers with boatmen in Atjoni (our port town), trying to build interest to expand the the capacity of this project.

At first, Matt Nofziger, the Peace Corps Volunteer of Bendikwai, and myself wanted to hold the boatman training in May with a budget of 90 SRD. Didn't work out that way. I went back to the United States on holiday in June until mid-July and the next possible date was early September. At this point things were still fairly disorganized. We had the boatmen contacts, we had the organization in the city giving us the condoms but no sure-fire, sustainable way to continuously get the condoms to Atjoni--the same problem the last volunteer had. Actually, Peace Corps Volunteers are going to continue to transport the condoms from NAP to the river for the time being, but we're trying to set up a way for the project to be 100% Surinamese--transportation, storage and distribution. On August 10, my luck changed. In a conversation with one of my bosses who had come to visit in Gunzi, she gave me the contact for a local medical clinic worker who lived in a village that neighbored Atjoni. He wanted Peace Corps Volunteers to help him with HIV/AIDS lessons. Bingo! I had also been informed that Peace Corps Suriname would be receiving PEPFAR(President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) funds to give HIV/AIDS trainings in Suriname. Again, BINGO! And again, the project would be pushed back until we could get the funds for the project.

So starting in September, once every two to three weeks I started hopping boats going between Gunzi and Pokigron, the neighboring village of Atjoni where the medical clinic worker lives and works. The boat ride is only an hour but it's an all day event as the boat leaves Gunzi at 8:30 am and does not leave Atjoni until an unspecified time after 2 pm, commonly referred to locally as "dalek" (translation: later, it should eventually happen). So I'd spend an hour or two at the medical post planning and organizing the event. Then, I'd have the rest of my afternoon to loiter in Atjoni and drown in all its free Parbo beers while trying to recruit boatmen to the project. One afternoon, while passing out fliers to market the event I asked a group of 10 guys if they were boatmen. All but one of them ignored me, they told me they drove cars. So I handed one flyer over to the only guy who told me he was a boatman and told him I'd be distributing condoms in two weeks. Then, the other 9 guys changed their minds and suddenly wanted to be boatmen and they were all arguing over who had the biggest motor. I distributed 9 more flyers for the training.

Working with the medical post in Pokigron as well as the local medical post near Gunzi, we decided to make posters. One had already been made in Saramaccan to inform people how to prevent HIV. Now the medical post wanted me to make two more--one in Dutch, one in Saramaccan. We'd inform people where to throw away their used condoms--probably was inspired after the HIV/AIDS training I held with the store owner in Nw. Aurora which was a pilot for the boatman training(see blog below). This was a pretty hilarious photo shoot. We took two pictures where not to throw away condoms--river and the street. Then we took three pictures where you should dispose of condoms--toilet, dig a hole and my personal favorite, burn it. I took a couple of different shots for each situation and when we were burning the condom the medical worker was getting pretty nervous as the fire kept getting higher and closer to the condom he was holding. The majority of our budget went into making these three posters for mass distribution among Saramaccan villages along the Suriname River. The rest of the budget would be for paper copies of a women's condom manual and refreshments at the event.

Around mid-October everything was good to go or so it seemed. NAP would be supplying condoms. The PEPFAR funds would be in. And so the posters could be printed. Actually, NAP's shipment got held up and the amount of condoms they could give me was far less than they had anticipated. Luckily Matt and I had been building up a stash of condom boxes NAP had given us earlier and with the few condoms NAP could supply this trip into the city we had about 1,900 male condoms to give away. We had hoped to distribute at least 3,000 male condoms at the event. After finding out we wouldn't have the amount of condoms we wanted, Matt and I also found out the PEPFAR money had not arrived in Suriname yet. I had to call the office supply store and ask for an advance for our posters which cost over 1,000 USD which is the equivalent of 4 months worth of my salary. The rest of the project budget I'd pay out of my own pocket until the PEPFAR money comes in and I can be reimbursed. And just because, when I dropped off my posters at the office supply store I found out the Dutch poster had spelling errors--after they had all already been printed. #$(%*!!! But, just when all hope seemed lost, the kind woman (nay, saint would describe her better) at the office supply store fixed the mistakes and re-printed every copy of the poster. Luckily she had caught the mistakes before laminating. She threw us a bone, fixed the errors in the document, reprinted 250 color copies and laminated them.

So Matt and I arrived in Atjoni with the medical worker from Pokigron on Monday, November 8, 2010. We had posters, 1,900 male condoms, 500 female condoms and 300 copies of a female condom manual in Saramaccan ready to distribute for the training at 10:30 am. A few minutes before 10 am, I'm thinking to myself, 'where the heck are these boatmen!?' I had anticipated 15 guys to arrive at the training but so far I'm only seeing about 7. Luckily, they start rolling into Atjoni around 10:15 am and can let out a sigh of relief. We get them to congregate into a building where we're serving cold refreshments which probably helped recruit two or three more guys. The training started around 11 am and went pretty smooth. I introduced myself, Matt, the other 3 Peace Corps Volunteers in attendance as well as the medical worker. I talked about the HIV situation in Suriname: over 12,000 people have tested positive for HIV and the most recent statistics show that there are 800 new HIV transmissions in Suriname each year. This is why we're here. From there, the medical worker did most of the talking. He showed the boatmen and 3 women how to properly use a male condom, he put this on a long stick, and female condom. We had each boatman hold and demonstrate how to properly use a female condom--I really hope Ryan snapped a picture of this. The medical worker and I taught the boatmen what HIV is, how HIV is transmitted, how they should go about distributing condoms and where people should dispose of those condoms. We distributed condoms and posters and then wrapped up the training with some radio interviews with those in attendance. On Monday night, the same day as the training, I played the interviews at the radio station in Gunzi. The following night I made a 20 minute HIV program and burnt it onto a CD. The CD, in the Saramaccan language, has information about HIV in Suriname, basic transmission and prevention facts, and includes interviews with the boatmen and medical worker from Atjoni. So far the reviews of the show have been positive.

As the project status stands, for the first time in a year I am out of condoms to distribute. NAP's condom ship is almost here though, so condom supply should not be a problem in the future. But, an arrangement is still being worked out for the city to send a steady supply of condoms to Pokigron for distribution to the boatmen. As it stands now, I'm still transporting the condoms to the Upper Suriname River. Since I am gone in less than a year, it will be vital for the sustainability of the project to find a consistent means of transportation of condoms from the city to Pokigron. As this is something that the medical post needs to organize, all I can do is wait, hope and continue to transport the condoms for the time being.

At the end of the day, 24 men and 3 women who also attended were trained in HIV/AIDS education and will distribute condoms in their communities along the Suriname River for the time being. The posters that were made are already hanging in different villages along the river. This training was such a success that the medical clinic in Pokigron is hoping to work with Peace Corps in the future and hold a second training aimed at women.