Using Bananas as a Teaching Tool

One of the main Peace Corps Mozambique secondary projects, Jovens-Unidos-No-Trabalho-para-Oppotunidade-e-Successo (JUNTOS) has as it's focal point a series of regional workshops. These workshops bring together youth-groups for a weekend of seminars to empower them to make decisions and distribute messages about safe-sex. This past weekend, for the second year in a row, I organized a workshop in Alto Molocue for youth-groups from Nauela, Murrupula, Mocuba, and Alto Molocue. Between the discussions on diversity, leadership, self-esteem, puberty, reproduction, violence, and HIV/AIDS,  the relatively small number participants develop a surprisingly strong bond. This allows them to ask questions that require more comfort and trust than a classroom might offer, like "what is anal sex like?", "does masturbating prevent you from having children?", and "can I impregnate my girlfriend if we have sex without a condom while she's menstruating?" Though it might be disconcerting to hear 13-21 year olds asking these questions, its great that a forum is created where they can have these doubts answered by people with accurate information.

Escuteiros with their teaching tools

This circle of trust also allows the PCV running the sessions to do what any youth-oriented volunteer living in a country where 11.5% of the population is HIV positive and the birth rate is the 11th highest in the world would want to do: condom demonstration! So after gathering together our Peace Corps Medical supplied condoms (they have very high expectations for our virility) and 30 bananas, fellow Moz 17er Stephanie led our workshop group in a step-by-step demonstration of how to put a condom on a banana. Involving much fewer condom balloons than I had originally imagined,  everyone successfully used protection on their monkey food. Afterwards, not wanting to waste food, we proceeded to remove the artificial and natural sheaths and eat our demonstration.

Though I can't say how many of the students actually learned how to put a condom on that night (a both distressing and encouraging number already knew), it was a very dynamic and exciting end to a long and information-full day. And in a country where condoms are most often used as hats, water carriers, gloves, soccer balls, and rubber bands, it was nice to know that on Saturday 30 were used to simulate their intended purpose.