My Ethiopian Education

This summer I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Ethiopia for one month.  With two other students from my university and six from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, we spent our time at Yesewasew Genet orphanage in Debre Libanos, which is about two hours north of the capitol city, Addis Ababa.  Our goal was to establish a library and teach enrichment classes to the students at the orphanage.  I flew 14 hours and 7,000 miles to a country that has surprised me in every way.  I was not expecting the lush green countryside, the misty mountains, monkeys, constant sound of Ge’ez chants, or the good-hearted and wonderful people I met everywhere.  I’ve learned a few dozen words in Amharic, the local language in the area I stayed in, and I became very close to the beautiful children that I worked with.

Africa. It sounded like another world to my middle-class, suburban ears.  Everything about the continent seemed exotic and dangerous.  I was warned about the dangers of mosquitos carrying malaria, food that I won’t be used to, and the very, very wet weather in the mountain region.  The Ethiopians I met at my school told me about the welcoming culture, the extended families that span from one side of the country to the other, and the unceasing friendships I would make there.  Before going to the country, I only knew how to say one word in Amharic: “Amaseganalo,” which is Amharic for “thank you.”  I used that word more than any other during the trip.

Debre Libanos, Ethiopia.  Photo by Virginia Marshall.

 

My mother was mainly concerned about my immunization from diseases prevalent in the area like Typhoid, Yellow Fever, and Hepatitis B.  She is a doctor, and all too familiar with illnesses due to ignorance or unpreparedness.  I had six shots in the month proceeding my departure, and I took malaria pills every day while in the country.  But my mother’s caution is a luxury, and even for American citizens whose mothers are not doctors, health care is luxurious compared to the availability of medical care in countries like Ethiopia.  In Ethiopia, 1.5% of the populations is living with HIV/AIDS, according to USAID’s website, and many villages are still struggling to get clean water, electricity, and plumbing.  The orphanage I stayed at thankfully had electricity, but their water source was a single pump in the center of the compound, and we had to drink bottled water because our stomachs were not used to the types of bacteria in the water. 

http://transition.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_may12/FL_may12_ETH_INTRO.html 

Most people in Ethiopia still live in very remote and rural areas where there are no schools for the children, let alone access to hospitals or medications.   At-home births are risky because of the high probability of unsanitary conditions, and mostly responsible for the high infant mortality rate; 88 out of 1,000 children do not live past age five.  Then there is the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission, a danger that has been pretty much eliminated in the United States.  It is possible to prevent mother-to-child transmission, but the mother must take the proper precautions before giving birth.  She must take a series of pills, which is easy to do in a developed country like the United States where health education and resources are funded by the government.  However, most Ethiopians live days away from large cities where there are health clinics and doctors.  Very few doctors travel around the country educating citizens.  There is one doctor for every 36,000 Ethiopians, whereas in the United States, there is approximately one doctor for every 500 people, according to indexmundi.com.

But thanks to Ethiopia’s new Minister of Health, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and USAID, there are programs in place now that bring nurses and health workers to these remote villages to educate the people about getting testing and prevention of HIV.  In a new program known as the “Female Army” (technically, the Health Extension Program), women are trained in basic medical and preventive care, and then sent out into remote areas of the country where they might assist with home births, or provide basic medical services.  As Dr. Ghebreyesus said in an interview with USAID, “To make these women’s groups really work in the whole country, they need to be able to address three things: maternal mortality, neonatal mortality and prevention of mother-to-child transmission [of HIV/AIDS].”      

 

Debre Libanos, Ethiopia.  Photo by Virginia Marshall.

   

These exemplary women do much more; they will lug clean water to remote farming families, and, when possible, try to convince women to deliver their babies in hospitals rather than at home.  Ayelech Getachew told USAID reporters in June that the satellite women center she runs offers women information about various methods of contraception that can help limit the size of their families.  “Anyone coming for family planning gets HIV tests,” Getachew added.

Another surprising part of Ethiopian culture was the huge influence of religion on every day life.  The orphans that came to know lived in a monastery town, and many of the boys were training to be priests.  Every day both boys and girls had to take four to six hours of spiritual lessons, and all children were encouraged to follow the strict Ethiopian Orthodox calendar of fasting.  In order to honor many of the saints, Orthodox Ethiopians abstain from food and attend church for a good part of the day.  I have found Ethiopia to be a country absorbed in traditions, many of which I have come to love, such as “gorsha,” when a person serves the first bite of injera and wot (very moist flatbread taken with hands and dipped into a savory stew) to another person as a gesture of friendship.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in an article called “Ethiopians Trade Holy Water for AIDS Drugs” published in March of 2012, many Ethiopians prefer their traditional remedies to taking western pills for ailments that are new and frightening, such as HIV.  There is a holy water site on Mt. Entoto, very near Addis Ababa, that is thought to cure AIDS.  By bathing in this water and drinking at least a gallon of it daily, some Ethiopians believe they will be cured, and so many adults suffering from HIV/AIDS travel to Entoto.  But in a new push to get ARV (antiretroviral) drugs into the country, medical workers encourage those who are HIV positive to take ARV pills along with their holy water remedies.  Some priests still warn that taking ARV pills is an anti-Christian act, but many priests are now seeing the positive affect of taking drugs.  Whereas three years ago there were 71,900 deaths from AIDS yearly, in 2010 there were 28,100 deaths thanks to the ARV drugs.  One priest who works at Entoto, Woidbesenbet, said, “I encourage people to get baptized and to take their medicine each day.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577182932291514986.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Debre Libanos, Ethiopia.  Photo by Virginia Marshall.

Aside from the “Female Army” education program, Ethiopia is doing a lot of work to make sure their citizen know the facts about HIV.  Again, formal schooling is hard to coordinate for remote Ethiopian communities; the students at the orphanage I worked at had to live in another town in order to attend public High School, and many of the oldest children had difficulty reading and doing simple math because of the scarcity of education. According to indexmundi.com, only 42.7% of Ethiopians over the age of 15 can read.

USAID reported that less than 1% of Ethiopians have a TV, but 41% of households own a radio.  Therefore, the primary mode of communication with the public is through radio shows, not formal classes or written pamphlets.  One radio series, “Journey of Life,” is broadcast every Sunday.  The radio show was developed by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and its goal is to educate about HIV, and start conversations about the tough topic in remote communities.  Here is an excerpt from the show:

Azeb’s Mother: No, my dear. As a mater of fact, there are more and more young people dying. As far as Dessa is concerned, she was ill for two years.

Azeb: What was her illness?

Azeb’s Mother: It was the disease of our time… you call is YEDS?

Elias: Oh, you mean AIDS?

Azeb: (Laughs) Did you say YEDS, mamma? So (feels sad) Dessa dies of AIDS?

Azeb’s Mother: It is not only Dessa. It is said that Abebe, who had a shop in our neighbour [sic], also died of YEDS. Anyway, many young people are dying of the disease. It must be more serious in the big city, Addis Ababa.

Elias: Mother, AIDS does not differentiate between country and town. The disease is caused by people traveling from place to place, and failing to restrict themselves to one.

Azeb’s Mother: So, it’s God’s wrath against mankind?

Azeb: Mamma, have something to eat and we will talk about it later.

Azeb’s Mother: Just a minute my dear… you said people get AIDS from traveling from place to place?

Elias: No, don’t be mistaken, Mother. One need not to travel to get AIDS. For example. One can catch the disease through blood transfusion, if blood from an infected person is given before it is tested.

And so on.

This particular episode aired in 2001, and the full transcript can be found here: 

http://www.anthonyroberto.com/eppm/hacr/Journey_of_Life_Episode_4_Translated.pdf

I hope that the classes we taught and the books that we brought to the new library at the orphanage in Debre Libanos will encourage the children to continue their education.  I have come to care deeply about the children I met, and each one has the potential to make a difference in their own country.  One day I hope to go back to Ethiopia to see what the children have done with their lives, and to return to the place where I first learned about the power of education.

Check out this Wall Street Journal article “Ethiopians Trade Holy Water for AIDS Drugs”.  It’s a good read.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577182932291514986.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

You can check out the program I am travelled with here.  It’s called Kids Helping Needy Kids, and it is a non-profit organization started by my friend and classmate at college, Mehron Price, and her sisters: http://www.khnkp.org/

Sources:

http://www.indexmundi.com/

--Virginia Marshall

GET DOWN Youth Blogger

@vrosemarshall

virginiarosemarshall@college.harvard.edu

Protest Art, Haring and HIV

We’ve heard it before—a picture is worth a thousand words.  If one can capture an idea or a feeling completely and powerfully with a simple image, suddenly, a movement is born. During the beginning of the AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 80s and 90s, artists banded together to create art in order to muster a feeling of protest and camaraderie.  The more the public knows and cares about the deadly reality of AIDS, the greater the numbers of those marching and demanding a cure.

Public art, graffiti, and activist art emerged as rallying points during the terrifying decades of the beginning of HIV/AIDS.  It seemed that the only way to be heard was to force images into a person’s everyday life: to paint subway walls with protest symbols, and paste Xeroxed posters on sidewalks.

According to Will Travers, founder and executive director of the cultural and political resistance website lokashakti.org (http://www.lokashakti.org/), art is a logical way to unite people, and to spread a message.  “It seems like using art as a medium for protest is particularly effective because it's accessible to so many different kinds of people.  Street art even more so.  Just looking at something forces you to have a reaction,” said Travers. Travers’ organization promotes social awareness by posting information about protest rallies and social justice issues that are happening now, around the world, along with a separate blog about protest art http://www.protestart.org/ .  It’s like social networking for activism, the goal being to be ‘in the know’ and prepared to join a cause as quickly as Google maps on can load the directions to the start of a march or location of a demonstration.

However, in the early 80s and 90s, there was no Internet to spread the word about protests or local activism.  At a time when HIV/AIDS activism desperately needed unity, artists struggled to connect their art with the public.  It was not as simple as creating a Twitter account and getting a large number of followers; getting the word out required a unique persistence.

Keith Haring was among the artists who changed the way art was distributed and digested.  For those just getting up on Haring, he was a young, gay artist in the time of ACT UP and Paradise Garage — which was a warehouse that hosted DJ dance parties primarily for the gay community.  He is known for his bold figures — the ‘radiant baby,’ the dog, and the UFO — and for his prevalence in street art.  

According to the Keith Haring Foundation website, in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1989 (http://www.haring.com/archives/interviews/index.html), Haring talked about his experience creating chalk drawings in subways.  “It was this chalk-white fragile thing in the middle of all this power and tension and violence,” said Haring. “The subway pictures became a media thing, and the images started going out into the rest of the world via magazines and television.”

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 at Brooklyn Museum

 

 

A picture of one of the chalk drawings Haring did with his artist friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, another pioneer of symbolic graffiti in the 80s and 90s, was recently featured among pieces at the Keith Haring exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.  I had a chance to check out this amazing exhibition, which was the first large-scale exhibition to explore his early career.  By drawing where he was not allowed, and forcing the public to confront whatever was put in front of them, Haring and other activist artists made the public aware of important issues.

Haring also clipped headlines from newspapers, arranged them in ridiculous ways, and then posted them on the streets. “The idea was that people would be stopped in their tracks, not knowing whether it was real or not… so they had to confront it and somehow deal with it,” said Haring in the Rolling Stone interview.

Here’s a picture that I took of those newspaper clippings, again at the Brooklyn Museum:

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 at Brooklyn Museum

 

But Haring did not just do street art. He used his talent to promote other artist friends, and raise awareness about issues important to him.  

Haring made this painting in 1988 to promote safe sex.  The image is bold and explicit, depicting two men jerking each other off, but as is the general idea of protest art and graffiti: get in touch with your audience by bringing the art to the people, even if the images are alarming. 

Other artists continue this legacy today when approaching current political and social issues. Molly Crabapple is one such contemporary artist (http://mollycrabapple.com/).  She makes protest art for Occupy Wall Street, among other artistic endeavors.  “I don’t really believe in putting things in boxes, I think things should be pervasive everywhere,” said Crabapple.  She went on to talk about the importance of creating a visual language—repeated and powerful symbols that come to represent a movement.  This was the same for Haring, as Julia Gruen, executive director of the Keith Haring Foundation, stated to me as we traded emails.  “He developed a visual language and alphabet based in part on semiotics, influenced by comics and graffiti, and synthesized those disparate influences into a vocabulary at once unique and yet somehow readable as part of a collective unconscious.” The Keith Haring Foundation — a foundation Haring created  — was establised to ensure that his philanthropy would continue, and that his images would be used for appropriate causes.  Gruen served as Haring’s own assistant from 1984 until his death from AIDS in 1990. 

Similar to the work that the Keith Haring Foundation continues to do to support AIDS research and other worthy causes, the west coast based Alliance Health Project also supports AIDS research by holding a big art auction in San Francisco every year called Art For AIDS (http://artforaids.org/ ).  According to dk haas, artist and organizer of the event, Art For AIDS “was started by some artists who were either themselves infected or knew of other people who were affected by the disease.”  The Alliance Health Project was among the first in the country to offer anonymous testing for HIV, and continues to offer health support for the LGBTQ community. 

It’s just another way art connects to activism.  Whether its raising funds for research, or getting the word out by way of an image, art is essential to unity and progress. “I’ve been saying for a long time that contemporary art was very not engaged with the outside world, and I think that with political people of the last few years, not being engaged, and just sticking with your galleries has become a cop out,” said Molly Crabapple.

Here’s an image to leave you with, done by Haring in collaboration with ACT UP.  It’s an image of the pink triangle, which has visual significance outside of the AIDS crisis; the pink triangle was used by Nazis in World War II to identify homosexuals, and then again used by ACT UP as a protest against the negative stigma of AIDS.  Here it is superimposed by images of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” and ACT UP’s motto: “Silence = Death.”  His art is telling us that if we don’t talk about being gay, safe sex, and finding a cure, the consequence will be tragic.

Silence = Death, 1989, Copyright Keith Haring Foundation 

 

Here is a link to the Keith Haring Foundation website, where a lot of Haring’s work is archived digitally: http://www.haring.com/cgi-bin/art_search_lrg.cgi?id=00604&search=safe%20sex&start=40

Having completed its run at Brooklyn Museum, Haring’s ‘radiant babies’ and more will travel to Santiago, Chile (8/20 - 9/29); Udine, Italy (9/2 – 2/15/13); and Paris, France (4/19 – 8/18/2013).  Keith Haring is also included an upcoming group show at New York’s New Museum entitled “Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969–1989” (9/19 – 1/6/2013).  New Museum 212-219-1222.

--Virginia Marshall

GET DOWN Youth Blogger

@vrosemarshall

virginiarosemarshall@college.harvard.edu

Lifebeat, Lil Scrappy and HIV: The Music Industry & HIV 20 Years Later

The heat is on! You know what that means – Summer Concert Tours!  On June 26^th, I got a chance to check out Glassnote Entertainment Group’s Childish Gambino (aka Donald Glover) in New York.  At his shows, while Childish Gambino tears through underground viral hits “Heartbeat” and “Outside” from his new album, “Camp,” representatives from Lifebeat hand out condoms and encouraging Childish Gambino fans to get tested for HIV/AIDS.   As it turns out, Lifebeat is partnering with Childish Gambino and other major concert tours this year as well, including Coldplay, Madonna and Wiz Khalifa, to raise awareness around HIV and help stop the spread.

Lifebeat, which has been around longer than I’ve been alive, is an amazing organization that brings AIDS awareness and money for AIDS research to music lovers and concert-goers.

Through benefit concerts and tours, Lifebeat, according to their website, is “the music industry’s response to the HIV/AIDS crisis.”

In New York, Lifebeat hosts benefit concerts or other benefit events almost every year when a portion of the ticket money is donated to AIDS research.  The first benefit concert took place in 1992 and female rap trio Salt-N-Pepa performed, along with the iconic band Pet Shop Boys.  Besides raising money and awareness, these first bands demonstrated the power of music by performing songs about the crisis.  Salt-N-Pepa performed their seminal safe sex song “Let’s Talk about AIDS”, a play on their “Let’s Talk About Sex”, in which they warned their audience about the ways a person can get HIV, and how to be smart about it.  Watching the video now, you might be momentarily distracted by the colorful windbreakers and mom jeans (but remember, it was the 90’s and everyone dressed like that).  Once you’ve gotten over the strange outfits, you’ll hear the lyrics that were intended to open people’s minds. First, you’ll learn that AIDS “is not a black, white, or gay disease,” and “the earlier, the sooner detected, the better off.”

The artists in Salt-N-Pepa are hip-hop pioneers, and at the time, they were at the top of their game.  The founders of Lifebeat knew how much influence a band like that can have on its fans.  When Salt-N-Pepa told their audience to “protect yourself or don’t have sex anymore,” people listened because the message was coming from a source that they admired.  To our generation of youth today, this type of rap may seem a bit outdated but it’s essential to understand that in 1992 this openness about AIDS transmission was pretty unprecedented.

The article “Aids-the Grim Reaper Of Rock”, published in the Chicago Tribune in February 1992, focused on the death of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury.  It claimed that many people in the music industry were HIV positive, but did not talk about it for fear of discrimination.  Bob Caviano, founder of Lifebeat, was one of these music industry people struggling with AIDS, and he was not about to let his own struggles go unsung.  He wrote in a 1992 Billboard Magazine article, “Music People With AIDS Need Help,” that it was time that music makers stood up to get the word out.  And slowly, they did.

 

“Rent,” the rock opera/musical about a group of friends living with HIV/AIDS and in various premiered in 1994, and all at once, Broadway was involved in the music frenzy surrounding AIDS. The trend that Caviano and Lifebeat started—to connect with the high-risk (young) population through popular music—has just begun to catch on in Africa, where AIDS is devastating whole communities.  The Tanzanian government started a program in 2004 called “Ishi” which means “live” in Swahili that produced a rap music video about safe sex, condoms, and abstinence.  The Democratic Republic of the Congo followed suit in 2011 when popular artists got together to rap and sing about how to protect yourself from contracting HIV.

 

With the recent disclosure of rap collective OFWGKTA’s sole singer Frank Ocean (an admitted bi-sexual), the conversations have just begun about sexual identity in hip-hop.  In response to Frank Ocean’s disclosure, TMZ solicited a response from VH1’s “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta” star and rapper Lil Scrappy who stated he was glad Frank Ocean came out because, according to Scrappy, “gay is a doorway to AIDS.”  This is simply not true.  Although certain segments of the population are higher in the number of HIV infections, the gender that you are attracted to does not determine whether or not you will contract HIV.  HIV/AIDS is a disease that lives in your blood and transmitted by bodily fluids; being gay, bisexual, or straight does not change your vulnerability to the disease.  We now know this from thirty years of research and studies.   

The TMZ host went on to talk about the closeted nature of the hip-hop world, saying that artists feared being shunned if they came out.  Lil Scrappy did say that he was glad that Frank Ocean came out, but his reasons for encouraging openness about sexual orientation were just wrong.  Disclosing sexual orientation does not magically protect a person from getting or transmitting AIDS any more than being closeted.  Nor does it mean that someone will automatically contract HIV.  Because rap artists are so influential, we need them to start talking about AIDS in a more educated way.  Artists, along with fans, need more HIV education.  The fact remains that we need to start talking about AIDS in the music world in general. HIV education must take place at all levels, even in the music industry, lest it continue to suffer in silence.  This silence, to impressionable fans, could mean the difference between life and death.  Twenty-years later, it might be time for a mainstream, chart-topping artist to make another anthem.

 

 

 

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of Lifebeat’s beginning, and still today the organization goes on tour with famous artists, and brings awareness to communities that are at high risk of having unprotected sex; young people in New York City.  Though Bob Caviano died of AIDS in September of 1992, his organization remains strong.  Today, Lifebeat also supports a program called “Hearts & Voices” that brings music and performers to people living in AIDS facilities in the New York area.  “Hearts & Voices,” brings joy and humanity to these communities, spreading the message that we haven’t forgotten, and we’re still here.

 

Lifebeat has an impressive history of working with famous and successful performers, including artists who participate in benefit concerts, and also artists who invite Lifebeat to go on tour with them, spreading the word about protecting yourself across the nation.  In the past, Lifebeat performances have included Mary J. Blige, Pink, The Dave Mathews Band, Wu Tang Clan, The Beastie Boys, Blink 182, Alicia Keys, Destiny’s Child, Elton John, Idina Menzel, Maroon 5, Phoenix, Plain White T’s, Ke$ha, Busta Rhymes, and Joe Jonas among many others.  It’s pretty cool to be behind the same cause as all of these artists.  We’re definitely not alone.

To cop some tickets for Wiz Khalifa (with Mac Miller), Madonna, and Coldplay, head over to www.ticketmaster.com before they’re all gone!

For more information on Lifebeat and its various programs, including “Hearts and Voices”, head over to  www.lifebeat.org.

--Virginia Marshall

GET DOWN Youth Blogger

@vrosemarshall

virginiarosemarshall@college.harvard.edu