Happy(?) AIDS Day

This Saturday evening was the culmination of Tom’s work with his NGO, the West African AIDS Foundation. They run a clinic here and do advocacy work for people living with HIV. The event, commemorating World AIDS Day, was at the Alliance Française, a French language and cultural center in Accra. It’s a really nice venue, as it’s a big courtyard with an outdoor auditorium and a bar. We arrived about an hour early with Tom, and helped carry boxes of donated bottled water and soda around, as well as putting up banners.
Hundreds of people ended up coming for the event, both Ghanaians and westerners. I hung around Tom and schmoozed with various important people that he was welcoming. When I wasn’t doing that, I played with the NGO head’s kids, three boys who desperately need less crack in their diet. We thought that they’d hit a wall at some point (figuratively, as they frequently literally ran into walls at high speeds and then bounced right back up) and get sleepy, but they were bouncing off the walls until they got taken home after 11.
The actual event started off with a performance by this drumming and dancing troupe. It was my first actual chance since I’ve been in Ghana to see something like this, so I really enjoyed it. They even did an HIV-awareness dance that told the story of why you should always use a condom. It was hilarious, intentionally and not. After that were acrobats, who we’d actually seen during our first week here at La beach. They did typical acrobat-contortionist things, but it really got impressive when they started juggling fire and jumping through flaming hoops. I’m not sure what any of this had to do with AIDS awareness, but that describes about half of the events that evening.
The informative part came next, with a speech by the head physician at the West African AIDS Foundation, as well as one by the president of NA+, the Ghana Network of People Living With HIV. We had a candlelight vigil, which Ghanaians were not interested in being quiet during, and then an apparently famous female singer came on to sing. She sang two “inspirational” songs, and then incongruously busted into a song about how she wasn’t in love, but she was going to be in love tonight. It was basically a song about getting some at the club, which was a great message for World AIDS Day.
This theme continued as a number of Ghana’s most famous rappers performed, including Screwface, Obomofuor, and Macho Rapper. These people are all famous here, I promise. Sonny, a Ghanaian who works at the Aya Center and hangs out with us a lot, got giggly-excited when he heard that Macho Rapper would be there. Anyway, they all sang songs about how gangster they are and how they get with lots of women, probably unprotectedly, so this was pretty funny but the crowd went nuts and had a great time. I got to meet most of these guys afterward, and they were all pretty friendly but had a long drive home so we didn’t get to go clubbing with them just that night. There was also free HIV testing at the event, and I passed on it, but my roommates Liz and Beth are now happily certain that they are HIV-free.
The final highlight of the evening happened while I was out in the courtyard during one of the rap performances. There was a projector set up here showing what was on stage so that those getting drinks or having a smoke wouldn’t miss it. While I was out, for two straight minutes the camera zoomed in on a dancing woman’s ass and just followed it around. No one except me found this strange. Also, during a poem read earlier in the evening on the subject of AIDS, the lines “Men, be careful. Women, stay faithful” were uttered. Ghana’s trying really hard, they are, but man they just don’t get some things.