Drama student helps raise AIDS awareness in Africa (From Gazette Series)

Drama student helps raise AIDS awareness in Africa

DRAMA student Esta Green, 17, from Wotton-under-Edge, took part in an unforgettable project this summer.

Joining Act4Africa, she worked alongside other young people providing HIV and AIDS prevention education through drama.

While she was there, the teenager kept a diary about the experience - the following details are extracts from it:

"The first week I was near Nairobi, Kenya. It was scary at night-time but we had lovely guards to look after us, so everything was fine.

"We stayed in an old lady's house from the local church. The people of the village took turns to cook for us and were all so kind to us.

"We visited the local churches and it was quite a shock to find that they were actually mud huts or made out of tin - I could hardly believe it was real.

"We made very close friends with some of the people there.

"We spent time training and rehearsing plays, then performing them - they had themes like the stories of Jonah, Moses and Paul.

"On the Friday, we left Nairobi airport to fly to Entebbe, Uganda where we stayed for one night, then travelled to Jinja where we stayed for a week.

"We went into schools, local centres and town centres.

"At the schools, we would perform one or more plays, involve the students in group games and do something called the Bridge Model, which teaches life skills - simple things like making decisions, saying "no", being assertive, feeling self-worth and that kind of thing.

"That was all followed by the amusing task of trying to split 500 students, who don't completely understand what you're saying, into workshop groups.

"Depending on what time we had left, we did different things.

"I led the sports - these were games that taught them (I'd say in a much more interesting way) about the stigma of AIDS, what AIDS actually does, about HIV in your body and life skills in general.

"At the end we had a question and answer session that never failed to be interesting.

We spent our third week in another part of "Uganda, Kasese, doing the same sort of things."

Esta told the Gazette: "I had a lovely time - although it was hard and very challenging, I'm pleased I did it."