Sexual Health and Gender Roles Training, Outat El Haj
SIDA is the french acronym for AIDS
It actually happened! And people came! Al-humdiallah!
This last Tuesday and Wednesday was our big Sexual Health and Gender Roles Training in our souk town. It is a bit of a milestone in my service thus far, as I was privileged to see it through from conception, to grant-writing, to grant-receiving, to Ramadan-waiting, to week-prior-scrambling, to actual event! Don’t get me wrong, the projects and events I have been involved in thus far have been rewarding in their own ways, but knowing this one inside and out was a nice, new experience (as opposed to fulfilling a grant written by someone else or racing against grant-expiration dates to bring educational events in rural areas to fruition).
The concept of the event was the basic idea of preventative education in sexual health topics (specifically HIV/AIDS and STIs) as well as sessions on gender roles in modern Morocco and discussions on how those might affect who contracts which diseases, who is most vulnerable, why they are more vulnerable, and what can be done to protect everyone from these avoidable health issues. The target age group was between 15 and 25 years old, and the turnout fit nicely into that bracket. Additionally (and I will admit, surprisingly) there was also a rather even ratio of females to males, and a substantial representation of youth from my rural village (22 out of the 46 total attendees). We had boys, girls, young men, young women, youth of both rural and urban provenance. Pinch me!
Our program called for half a day of health lessons, divided between a general presentation on HIV/AIDS and statistics about the rise of transmission in Morocco over the last 25 years and smaller activity sessions divided along gender lines to allow the female and male health professionals leading our sessions to more easily field sensitive questions. The “boy’s room” left in the capable hands of our male nurse volunteer, Abdullah, and my fellow PCV fellas, I can only personally comment on the atmosphere of the ladies’ room. Genuine and somber interest permeated the entirety of the activities and lessons, which left me with a confusing mixture of relief and sadness. Relief that these messages were well-received, yet sadness that these were seemingly somewhat unknown topics previously. A knowledge gap that three hours of health lessons can hardly hope to fill. Repeated and enthusiastic requests for more health events, specifically women’s health events, was a small consolation, however.
Following a morning of health events, we ventured into gender roles territory for the remainder of the first day. Due to personal reasons, our original lesson and activity facilitator was obliged to cancel the day immediately preceding the event, but in true Moroccan fashion, things kind of came together in the end. Our youth center counterpart and friend, Hassan, stepped up to the plate, and skillfully led the 46 youth through two sessions on identifying gender roles in their communities and discussing how those roles might present greater risks to women, in particular. To say the topic was void of heated debate…. would be a lie. A big one. But the overall experience and messages were very positive and instigating a little healthy debate and analysis of deeply rooted cultural structures by individuals from within that culture was a definitively positive outcome. As purposefully quiet bystanders in the gender roles activities, we volunteers got to witness the discussion of a topic that, by many measures, can be an “elephant in the room” in our experiences of Morocco. Enlightening, to say the least.
The final element of our workshop was the second day of mural painting at the youth center. Previously hideous yellow walls were made slightly more colorful over the course of 4 hours on Wednesday morning by a troop of youth from the day before. Phil, the volunteer living in Outat and an individual of particular artistic ability, designed the murals to be a blend of the subject of our workshop, the participating partners of the Moroccan ministry of Youth and Sports and Peace Corps, as well as both the Moroccan and American flags. Quite a bit to cram into one or two mural designs… bravo, dude.
And so concludes the workshop (with the exception of completion reports and expense logs… sigh). Like many things here, I see that fighting through the challenges of an initial effort has led to many new and exciting potential opportunities. Connections were made, taboos were addressed and hopefully, between the lessons and the take-home resource, some attendees feel they have an avenue for answering some difficult questions.
the ladies' room, led by a genius of a public health educator, Kaoutar the Midwife
all the female attendees, including 12 6th graders from my village... waiting for the boys' room to wrap up lessons for lunch
my friend and fellow volunteer, Avery, with a group of boys during health lesson group work on STI symptoms
group work on gender roles, dividing random activities according to "male" or "female" roles, and then discussing with the group why... and what implications result
Resource texts given out (it says "sexual health and gender roles training" in Arabic)
a few attendees painting on day two
jump for joy! Avery, one of the completed murals, and myself on day two
tho whole gang (minus phil 
) at the end of the workshop, alongside one of our masterpieces
