Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day

February 18, 2018

Our main event this week was visiting our communities Nwagu, Limo and Gupanarigu to deliver an event raising awareness about Sexual Health and Reproduction (to tie in with the International day on 12/02). The volunteers worked hard together to plan roleplays on consent, family planning, menstrual health and protecting against STIs. They performed these in Dagbani as this is the main and sometimes only language in our communities. However, using drama as a medium to educate meant everyone could get involved. We would perform a good example and a bad example then invite the audience to participate with questions. In relation to consent, this meant a scene where the wife was making dinner and the husband came in, demanded sex and took her away even though she asked not to. This was followed by a scene where the husband asks again but the wife is busy and declines which he accepts and supports. A mixture of culture and religion means it is acceptable for a husband (if that is how he chooses to live) to demand sex at any time from his wife as that is one of her purposes. We also educated them on the importance of washing any rags used during menstruation and hanging them in the sun to kill the bacteria. There is still a stigma relating to periods which can cause girls to hide these rags under beds which is a breeding ground for bacteria and will result in them getting infections. You can buy sanitary towels in town but out in the communities they won’t have access to resources like that.

After the roleplays we gave out free condoms to promote safe sex, it was Valentine’s Day after all …. We also gave them leaflets that had been hand drawn and photocopied. All the participants that attended from each community put their thumb in ink and used this to make a leaf on our tree posters which we left with each community. After the first community we headed to a spot where the second and third combined to deliver the event again. It was a long full day and most people had assumed we could get lunch and water somewhere, but there wasn’t anywhere so we had to stick it out until the job was done.

On Friday, 2 of our volunteers, who are trainee nurses, delivered a first aid session with the aid of a Dagbani speaking volunteer to the women who work in our Sagnarigu Pagsung office. They really enjoyed it and asked for more training included English lessons which are a great thing to do as they also don’t take away from our remaining budget which we have to consider as part of our placement.

This brought week 5 of 10 to a close! On Saturday, me and one of my volunteers decided to do a Ghanaian version of clothes shopping. I walked up to the main road once it had cooled to the high 30s to get my yellow-yellow into town. We spent the afternoon walking through the market maze from fabric shop to fabric shop looking for that perfect fabric for gifts or clothes for ourselves. You buy the sheet of cotton fabric of your choice in yards (e.g. 3 yards for a pair of pants) and then take this to a tailor to me made into an item of clothing of your choice. 3 yards of fabric would cost about £5 and then the tailoring for another £2.50. However, I will give you a better overview of the world of fabric in a later post ……

After finding some good bargains, in my first actual shop since being here that wasn’t essentials like coffee and washing powder, I headed home for dinner and watched the premier of our show on NTV. It was really fun to watch and the volunteers did a great job promoting our work here. I will try and post some videos on my Facebook of the roleplays and tv show when I get the chance. However, we “danced” to end the tv show so I’m not sure whether I should hide it away in some folder on my hard-drive never to be seen again.