HIV and AIDS
Interview with a clown
Asociacion Payasos, Atz'anem k'oj's (The Clowns) use street thearte, clowning techniques and workshops to communicate with indigenous people in Guatemala about HIV and AIDS information. Over 60% of the Guatemalan population live rurally.
The Clowns have reached 290, 000 vulnerable people in around 600 communities throughout Guatemala, and seven other countries in Central America, since 2001. They deliver performances in twelve indigenous languages plus Spanish, English and Garifuna. A recent focus is training over 120 Youth Peer Educators (YPE) in thearte, clowning and communication techniques to engage young people in health and HIV and AIDS issues.
Q.You use clowning techniques to get the message across - it's
not the most obvious approach - why clowns?
Clown's are the universal king's fool, free and able to tell harsh truths
to people in authority. Clowns have a diplomatic immunity, they can broach
difficult topics and we can get people to talk about it. Clowns are also
the friends of children so that gets us in the local communities. So the
children get to see all the juggling while the adults get the message, the
children like the colours, the show and laughter.
Q. You raise awareness of reproductive and sexual health and HIV
and AIDS - are these issues a big problem in Guatemala?
There is a big problem with saying these are an issue because there is not
any hard statistics to go on. There is no hard data only anecdotal evidence.
There is increasing official data but there is under-reporting in terms
of cases. For instance, Guatemala does not record HIV positive diagnosis
- they only record AIDS defining illness and they under-report those. Most
of the places where indigenous people live there aren't any testing facilities.
If there aren't any testing facilities how are you going to generate a statistic,
and if you don't generate a statistic you can rest assure you don't have
a problem. The fact that more and more people are dying of TB at weird ages,
between the ages of 30 and 50. We are getting more of those statistics,
more anecdotal evidence. There is more pressure for people to engage in
risky behaviour such as seasonal migration to find work or long term migration
to the United States. There are something like 2 million illegal immigrants
from Guatemala living in the United States and sending money home.
What we are looking at is a situation that if there is not substantial prevention
efforts now, in the next five years, if we don't engage in substantial efforts
to prevent then we will end up with a problem similar to Namibia. In Namibia
it went from 'we don't have a problem' to overnight 5% prevalance.
Q. Why did you start this work?
I had been working on HIV in Australia for several years with issues of
access and equity with refugee and immigrant communities. What we observed
was that the majority of the indigenous population in Guatemala were living
under the same conditions and circumstances of exclusion from mainstream
messages. So there might have been mainstream messages generated on HIV
and AIDS but they certainly weren't percolating down to the grass roots
because of a number of issues. One was language, another was the fact that
the health state apparatus is dominated by one ethnicity that is non-indigenous
and there is traditional antagonism between communities.
Q. Is this approach successful - how do you measure the impact
of your work?
We know that we've been part of a successful movement. I don't think we
can claim direct credit for any of the lives saved or anything like that
but I don't think that is we what we offer. What we have is a situation
where the community sector is becoming increasing aware that HIV is a problem.
The community sector is primarily indigenous in Guatemala. Six years ago
the indigenous organisations that we approached didn't want anything to
do with the issue. HIV was someone else's problem, it wasn't owned by them
and now six years down the line we are seeing a great deal more interest
on the part of indigenous organisations. We've managed to, and this has
been a collective effort, through advocacy and lobbying, expand the definition
of what a youth at risk is. In terms of global funding and the global funders
now including to extend to all young people which will include indigenous
people. We are still not at the point where indigenous people have been
explicitly named in national strategies but we are getting there, we are
getting to that point.