Men’s Health in Santa Barbara

The past two weeks I have been busy preparing for the Men’s Health training of trainers in Santa Barbara. I was awarded a community grant from the Peace Corps in order to do a short term HIV/AIDS prevention activity. I decided to use the money to hold a 3 day Men’s Health workshop to train adult men in Santa Barbara to be facilitators of the “Aqui Entre Nos” methodology to teach HIV prevention and other men’s health topics to adult men. The first two days of the workshop involves teaching all the information and the third day the participants actually have a practicum for which they teach the activities they have just learned to other groups of men. I worked in collaboration with the Santa Barbara HIV Network to plan the event and facilitated it is with three other Peace Corps volunteers. All in all the event was a success, but there were a number of “glitches” that made for an exciting planning process…

First, the overall process of planning in Honduras happens a little bit more last minute than I am used to, which caused a slight bit of stress on my part. I had initially hoped to deliver invitations with 3-4 weeks notice, since the workshop was held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday people may need to get off work and I wanted to give them enough notice. Well, I printed out all the invitations and signed them and was ready to have my counterparts, the president of the HIV Netowrk, sign them as well. It turns out she was on vacation for over a week, which I didn’t know about. The following week I was out of town and then our weekly meeting with the HIV Network were canceled for a few weeks in a row. In the end we didn’t end up giving people the invitations until about a week or two in advance. Some of the invitations were delivered a day or two in advance and some were never delivered at all because the members of the HIV Network never got around to doing it. I had hoped to have 25 participants and the day before the workshop we had 25 confirmed…how many showed up? 13! Growing up in the states I became accustomed to the fact that if you say you are going to do something you usually do it, if you RSVP to something it generally means you will go, or call to cancel if something comes up. Well, here in Honduras, when you say you are going to do something it means that you may or may not do it and that one can’t really know until the last minute. For example, I talked to some of the confirmed participants in person the day before and even the morning of the workshop and they assured me that they would be there…and then they didn’t show up and didn’t call to explain. Sometimes I feel as if many people here have no sense of responsibility and that their word means very little. I think it may come from a desire to please. Those who I invite want to make me happy and so they say they will do something because I ask them to, but it really doesn’t mean they actually have the time or desire to do it. So, in the end only 13 showed up…although 25 would have been better, 13 is better than nothing.

Second, setting up the practicum groups was also challenging. Like I said before, the third day of the workshop consisted of the participants themselves teaching the material they had just learned to other groups of men. It is an important part of the workshop because it forces them to immediately put in practice what they have learned and move from just listening to doing. It also shows them how hard it actually is and that they have to do a lot of preparation to do well. The members of the HIV Network were instrumental in organizing the four groups of men and everything worked out well in the end, but was a little rocky getting there. Two wonderful members of the HIV Network (who actually do what they say they are going to do) organized one group of police and two groups of prisoners. Another member said she would talk to Real Juventud, the Santa Barbara division II futbol team to see if we could do the practicum with them. Well, a month later and she still hadn’t even approached them to talk about it, so I figured out how to meet with their coach and asked him the week before if we could work with them, which we couldn’t because the players would be traveling that weekend. Later I told another member of the HIV Network that I was really embarrassed to have asked the coach with only one week’s notice if he could work with us. My friend didn’t seem to understand why I was embarrassed. Maybe I need to remember that lots of things happen last minute in Honduras, so even though I feel like it is rude to ask somebody to do something last minute, they don’t think it is. So, then we were left without a group…I told the members of the HIV Network that we needed another group so someway or another they better make it happen. Since I didn’t have much control over whether we could find another group or not I just figure I would leave it up to them and things would work out in the end.

Third, we had to find a location to hold the workshop and so one of the hard working members of the HIV Network managed to get the mayor’s office to loan us a conference room in the municipal building. We confirmed and re-confirmed that the room would be reserved for us for free, with AC, for three days. Well, when the day finally arrived Raphael, Cynthia, Conor and I all arrived early at the municipal building to meet with members of the HIV Network and start to set up the room. Well, when we walked into the room we discovered that the mayor was holding a meeting in the room that was supposed to be reserved for us. We talked to the Vice-Mayor and he said the meeting would be done by noon. No problem, our workshop didn’t start until 1:30 pm, so we could come back at 12 and still have an hour and a half to set up. Well, we come back at 12:30 and the meeting was still going on. I talked to the Vice-Mayor and he said they won’t finish until around 1:30 so we would just have to postpone our meeting because the mayor is the ultimate authority. I wanted to scream at them! I wanted to ask them what the word RESERVED meant to them because it was obvious we had different understandings of the meaning of that word. In the end they finished a little before 1:30, we set up quickly and didn’t start until 2:15 anyway because people arrived late. Another issue with the room we were using was that it was the main entrance to the mayors office, so everybody would use it to cut through to the rest of the building although there was a side door. I put a sign on the front door announcing the meeting and asking that only participants enter. On the back door I put a sign that said meeting in process, please do not interrupt. Well, either nobody can read or they simply don’t care because people walked in and out of the door throughout the three days we were there. Most of the time it was just obnoxious but sometimes it was very disruptive. For example, we had an HIV positive man come and give a testimony about his life and people were continually walking through! Then the final glitch…Friday it occurred to us to ask who would be opening the room the following day (Saturday) and at what time. Well, they informed us that the office wouldn’t be open on Saturday so nobody would be there to open and close the room. So apparently RESERVED means that you can write your name down on a calendar but it doesn’t actually mean the room will be unoccupied or open for use! So, Friday afternoon we started to brainstorm other conference rooms we could use. In the end the guy with the key agreed to come in the morning and open the room and then leave the key with us to close it at the end of the day. He actually ended up arriving 5 minutes early the next day and ended up staying to close the building at night! These things get me so worked up while they are happening but in the end always seem to work out (most of the time anyway).

Lots of fun activities so the men don’t get bored. This one is like group rock-paper-scissor, but with wall, hunter, deer.

The workshop itself went well. Raphael, Cynthia, Conor and I all took turns presenting different activities. I had to present some I had never done before so it was challenging and I felt slightly self-conscious about my Spanish because the rest of the group speaks better than I do. The group was a little quite and a few of them a little young, but all-in-all seemed to enjoy the activities.

In addition to teaching HIV prevention we do “quickies” (pun intended) that quickly touch on other men’s health issues such as smoking, different types of cancers, erectile dysfunction, domestic violence, etc. Here Raphael and I are demonstrating how to do a testicular self exam.

The first two days we presented all the materials and did the activities for them and then on Friday afternoon we broke them up into groups and had them start preparing their materials and presentations for the next day. We originally had arranged for 4 groups because we anticipated having 25 participants, but since only 13 showed up we combined 2 groups into one. Two groups went to the jail to work with inmates and one group worked with a group of police and Social Promotion students (10 of them showed up but they misunderstood that the workshop was only for me and sent 5 girls and 5 guys, se we sent the girls home and the 5 guys joined the police).

Although all the needed information for each activity is written out in the manual, including a materials list, the activities still seemed to challenge the participants. The concept of reading through something and figuring out what you need to do to prepare and practice seems like a foreign idea to them and we had to hold their hand through the whole thing. It was clear that many of them hadn’t even read through their activity and just got up and stumbled their way through the presentation.
Charles is one of my counterparts that attended the workshop. He is the coordinator of Jovenes sin Fronteras, an NGO that teaches HIV prevention to youth. He was the best participant and I can’t wait to teach Men’s Health with him!

As I said, two of the practicum groups went to the jail and presented to the prisoners. I have only been in one jail in the states (in Georgia) so that is my only frame of reference, but I think it is safe to say that the jail here is a whole lot different than the ones in the states. Conor, another Peace Corps Volunteer described it as a little city with walls around it. First of all it is right in town, about half a block from the central park, right behind the cultural center. Second, it doesn’t have individual cells like in the states, it is all just open. They have pool tables, open space for sports, people cooking, people making hammocks and hanging out. I actually wasn’t working with on one the practicum groups so I visited all the groups to take pictures and make sure they had all their materials. I arrived at the entrance to the jail and said I wanted to go to where they were doing the practicum. A guard escorted me to the classroom and left me there. I hung out a while in what looked like a regular elementary school classroom with the alphabet, shapes, numbers and classroom rules on the walls (except it was for adults).

Practicum group in the jail.

When I arrived they were in the process of figuring out role, who was supposed to be there and who wasn’t (lots of people wanted to come).

This is Telma, she is a retired teacher and a very active member of the HIV Network. She was one of the most helpful people throughout the entire planning process and made sure things got done that needed to be done. She has worked with the prison extensively through the Catholic Church so she was able to set up the two practicum groups there. Here she is calling role and doing a darn good job of it.

Although I wasn’t there very long my general impression is that the inmates didn’t seem like malicious or dangerous men. More than anything they seemed young and uneducated. Many of them couldn’t read and probably came from very poor backgrounds. When it was time for me to leave (I don’t think my parents will appreciate this…sorry) the guard had already left so I just left the classroom by myself and found my way to the entrance, meaning that I had to walk through the open courtyard of men alone. I was wearing a nametag (which I forgot I had on) so many of them called out my name, but they weren’t disrespectful and I didn’t feel at all threatened. When I came back later on during the morning to deliver the diplomas for the participants the guard recognized me and just opened the gate and I walked to the classroom alone. Although Santa Barbara is considered a more low key prison and I felt safe and had no problems it is probably not a very safe practice.
Practicum group with the police and 5 Social Promotion students.

Overall the practicum groups managed to work their way through the 4 hour workshop with the help of the Peace Corps volunteer assigned to help each group. Two participants actually didn’t show up the morning of the workshop so we had to jump in and take over their parts. One of the participants that didn’t show up sent me a text message saying he was sick and may God bless him and give him strength to recover. I didn’t believe it for a second! Later that day I ran into his mother and asked how he was doing and she said he was sick with sinusitis. Later that night I saw him out at the disco and called him out and told him I didn’t like to be lied to. He said sorry, he wasn’t sick, just hung over. As far as the other guy that didn’t show up I called his house and talked to his mom and told him he needed to come because he had a responsibility to his group and she said she would send him but he never showed up…

This is Juan, one of the workshop participants, leading an activity during the practicum.

Once we finished with the practicum we all got back together as a group and ate lunch. Four of the participants had to leave early because their last bus left at 2 pm and we weren’t scheduled to finish until 4:30 pm. On the invitation it said that you had to be present for the entire workshop so I didn’t want them to leave early but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had them fill out the final evaluations early and gave them their diplomas so they could catch their bus on time. When some of the other participants saw that others were leaving early they said they were also going to leave early. I told them they had to stay for the entire workshop and because they didn’t have a reasonable need to leave early they would have to stay. It was an incredibly frustrating situation, I felt like I was dealing with little boys whining about how “It’s not fair that they get to leave early, I want to leave early too!” Well apparently I let my annoyance show a little too much and upset on of those who wanted to leave early. He told Cynthia, one of the other facilitators, that I was rude to him and he was going to leave right then. He did end up staying to do the final evaluation but pouted the whole time. Cynthia told me that she apologized to him for me but that I should also apologize to him. At first I had no intention of apologizing to a grown man acting like a child. In the end I realized it is better not to burn bridges and if I wanted to work with him in the future I should drop my pride and apologize. I did apologize and he was completely fine after that and told me not to worry about it at all.

In the end we quickly did an evaluation of how the practicum went then we had them fill out post-tests, final evaluations and community agreements. The post tests are given so we can measure if the participants learn anything, but I still haven’t analyzed the data so who knows if they did or not. The final evaluations are given to provide us with feedback so we can improve, but usually they are almost all positive and very hard to read. The community agreements are given to the participants so they can write down an action plan about how they are going to use what they have learned to teach others in their communities. Their plans always sound wonderful and ambitious but if they actually follow through remains to be seen. If I want to see the multiplier effect actually work then I personally will have to follow up and work with each of them to plan, prepare and execute future workshops. Right now they are not ready to go out on their own and give the workshop but I think there are a few who have potential if we work together a lot in the future.

So what did I learn from this experience? First, things will never be perfect, something will always go wrong, sometimes terribly wrong, but in the end things usually end up okay. Second, if I want something done right I have to do it myself, but I don’t have time to do everything myself and things don’t really need to be 100% right so I need to get to know the people I can rely on and focus on working with them in the future.
The local TV station and radio station both came to interview me! Luckily I didn’t see or hear myself but other people did and they said that my Spanish was good.