World AIDS Day

Well. We're back. Sorry about the delay in blogging, but we’ve been busy settling back in and sorting ourselves out. You’ll be glad to know that it’s obscenely hot (unlike our 8 degree day in Sydney), and there are plenty of bananas, mangos and pineapples to satisfy any fruit cravings we may have (photos of fruit to be posted soon). We arrived back to discover that we now have a television and dvd player (Thanks Mike!), as well as a tv connection! So we can now keep up to date on the happenings in the world, and Funniest Home Videos and other similarly crap tv shows. Also the Ashes, which has had the male half of our household glued to the tv for the last few days. We are also half way to having a phone, in that there are lines mysteriously connected up to the outside of the house, but unfortunately none on the inside of the house yet, and no actual phone. But we are getting closer.

As has been mentioned before Alotau is a rather sleepy little town. But this was not so when we arrived back on Tuesday afternoon. I (Jane) discovered that not only was World AIDS Day on Friday 1st December (as usual), but there would be a march in town, and my group had been asked to perform for the day. So we spent Wednesday and Thursday getting our piece together.



World AIDS Day was great. While the march was only small, I think we caught everyone’s attention, and the first step is raising awareness. There were speeches and performances from various doctors, school groups and other groups such as Igat Hope, a HIV/AIDS support group started by HIV infected (and affected) persons. Some pretty inspirational stuff. The Wanigili Theatre group put on a great performance focusing on educating about the virus (e.g. It’s ok to use the same toilet as someone who is HIV positive, but people generally shouldn’t share needles when tattooing etc.). The crowd seemed to enjoy the piece, the group was happy and confident, and Maxine and I were so proud of them! Please enjoy the first piccies we’ve posted of my group on this blog (for more information about the Wanigili Theatre Group, see their blog http://wanigilitheatre.blogspot.com).





The day was incredibly hot, so we opted not to stay for the whole thing, but thankfully we heard later that the debate “That condoms should be abolished in PNG as it is a Christian country” was won by the negative team. Phew.