My Experience Teaching HIV/AIDS in Jamaica and South Africa

As promised, here is a blog about my commitment to HIV/AIDS.

During my sophomore year at the University of Michigan, I was awarded an internship for the summer with the Canadian Parliament. It was an amazing opportunity that would provide an experience that would look great on my law-school application. Although I wasn't so excited about the prospect of living in Canada for the summer, I thought it would definetly be worth it.

The spring after my freshman year I had taken a class with Dr. Nesha Haniff on affirmative action at the University of Michigan. It was an intense, and ultimately life-changing class. It was the only class I ever took where white and black students actively confronted and engaged the racism present around them everyday. Students argued and cried regularly... but at the end we all walked away better people. It was there that I first learned how to articulate myself in a coherent (and dignified) way about social justice issues.

So when I learned about Dr. Haniff's study abroad trip to Jamaica, I knew I had to go (and leave Canada behind *smile*).

Dr. Haniff led a group of approximately 10 students to the island of Jamaica to teach HIV/AIDS to middle school students, adults, resort and sex workers. We used the module she developed that allowed us to teach community members how to teach others about HIV/AIDS prevention without being literate.

The trip changed my life.

It was there that I learned that true community engagement did not just mean "leaders" educating the people around them. It meant valuing the ways in which the community within which you work teaches, guides and transforms you.

I learned more from the young girls I taught in Kingston, Jamaica, then I have learned from anyone else in my 23 years of life. One young woman had found her aunt in a bush outside of her house after she had been brutally raped, stabbed and sexually mutilated. Another had almost been a victim of rape as she walked home from school and was pulled into a taxi cab by 4 middle aged men. She was only saved by her mother who started screaming and scared the men away. Both young women had multiple family members and friends who were HIV/AIDS positive. They had both also witnessed incredible violence that could have easily scarred any child.

But what was so amazing about both was the way in which neither had been jaded by their experiences. They both carried themselves with such pride and dignity, and even more amazing, they maintained their childish innocence, manifest in dreams to be superstar singers in the United States and hollywood actors.

It was from these young women that I learned what it meant to be resilient.

And I continued to learn powerful lessons throughout my trip across the island. And it was my next trip to South Africa to continue my HIV/AIDS education work with Dr. Haniff, that ultimately made me realize that law school would not be in my future.

I realized that teaching was something I was passionate about. But more than that, that mentorship and scholarship, were going to be central parts of my future, because of the way in which all three of these things had the power to both inform and transform the space in which we live.

I can honestly say, that my experience teaching HIV/AIDS in the United States, Jamaica and South Africa, played a critical part in shaping the person I am today.

And it is for that reason that I am so committed to raising money for HIV/AIDS positive folks in Chicago. Please DONATE, and help me continue the fight I am so passionate about.

This picture is from one of the schools my group (from the University of Michigan) taught at in Kingston, Jamaica in summer 2005.



This picture is of our students in a township just outside of Durban, South Africa called Cato Manor in summer 2006




peace.