Dance Delivers HIV/AIDS Prevention Messages in Mozambique

-unpublished

“You can’t catch AIDS by hugging.” “I am sexy, cool and strong.” “People living with HIV/AIDS can contribute a lot to society.” These were just some of the messages that more than 75 OVCs (“orphans and vulnerable children,”) shared with their communities during three different performances that were part of an innovative project called “Dance for Life.” This project was started by Stephanie Scherpf, a U.S. citizen living in Maputo, Mozambique, in partnership with a traditional song and dance group based in Maputo called “Milorho,” meaning “dreams” in the local Shangana dialect.

Dance for Life initially got off the ground with seed money from a PEPFAR (President Bush’s Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief) small project grant awarded by the U.S. Embassy in Maputo. With start-up funds in hand, the group busied themselves with training in preparation to implement a curriculum developed and written by Stephanie that aimed to educate youth from three local orphanages in the areas of HIV/AIDS education and life skills.

Having worked as the Director of Outreach and Education at a major ballet company in the States for five years before arriving in Maputo, Stephanie brought what she knew from the arts-in-education field in the U.S., combined it with basic HIV/AIDS education, and put the combined result to work in Mozambique, a country where the national HIV/AIDS prevalence is at 16% and growing. The Dance for Life curriculum includes a comprehensive and sequential plan of twenty lessons that treat areas such as self-esteem, gender, risk-taking, STDs, how to use a condom, modes of HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention, and understanding stigma.
The approach is unique in that all subject material is integrated with the mediums of traditional dance and music, highly popular art forms that make up an important part of Mozambican cultural identity. In an environment where the international donor community is being called upon to “mozambicanize” HIV/AIDS prevention messages and campaigns due the fact that preventions efforts haven’t been as successful as expected, this methodology holds particular promise because it engages youth through a cultural activity that is very much their own while simultaneously imparting knowledge critical to a healthy future.

Dance for Life was implemented at three orphanages, all within an hour’s drive of Maputo, the country capital. At each orphanage, youth between the ages of 10-14 were selected to participate in 25 classes that took place during a period of 8 weeks. The classes were taught by a teaching team of Milorho dancers and musicians who underwent extensive HIV/AIDS and curriculum training with Stephanie and advisors from the international organization PSI (Population Services International).

On any given day, one could walk into an improvised dance studio at one of the three orphanages, and find young people engaged in how to use dance to best represent the human immune system or feelings of stigmatization experienced by people living with HIV. Not only energized by the fresh approach to HIV/AIDS education (now in danger of becoming overplayed to urban youth), the students were also motivated by the prospect of a “performance” day on which the entire surrounding community, as well as the media and important Embassy and international officials, would be invited to see what they had learned.

On three different Saturdays in August and September, 75 youth rose to the occasion and shed the label “OVC” to become community HIV/AIDS educators who entertained, educated, and enlightened the young and old who had gathered that day to see their culture servicing the effort to stop a disease that infects more Mozambicans each day. At each performance, the young dancers were joined by senior members of Milorho who had prepared their own choreography about HIV/AIDS especially for these events.
Where the orphanage youth were more didactic, juvenile, and clear-and cut in their messaging, Milorho presented a piece which was more nuanced, sophisticated, and artistic. Scenes where a young woman seductively implores her partner to use a condom were met with reactions of shy laughter by the Mozambican audience who appreciated the dancer’s tactics to wield more power in the bedroom, a place where men generally dictate. This is no small matter in sub-saharan Africa where experts talk about the “feminization” of HIV/AIDS as it continues to increasingly impact women due to both their biological and social vulnerability.
Will Dance for Life prevent x number of new HIV/AIDS infections? That’s difficult to say, but at the end of the day, approximately 2,000 community members were exposed to a piece of living culture that transmitted key HIV/AIDS prevention strategies and artistically reflected the conundrum of living as a sexually active adult in Africa. Seventy-five “OVCs” cum HIV/AIDS activists received in-depth HIV/AIDS education through a participatory method that allowed them to internalize the information in a way much more potent than any traditional classroom approach. Rather than hard statistical data, perhaps the results of Dance for Life are more like sound waves produced by a drum, rippling across the community, registering with one Mozambican and then another, and then another.