First visit in Maxixe

Before organising the workshop, we visited Maxixe’s ‘Escola Secundaria 29 de Setembro’ several times. On their last visit, Helio D and Roland Pickl were introduced to the pedagogical director, and presented the workshop to students in a classroom. They had a debate on HIV-AIDS, use of condoms and eventually music tastes in the school. A few students raised the question of abstinence and the director answered :

“Abstinence implies isolating people who have been infected from people who haven’t. But those who have been infected once still need protection. Abstinence is a good solution only for those who have never had sex before. Otherwise, condoms remain safer.”

During this visit, papers were distributed to pupils for them to answer the question ‘Why do we not use condoms?’. The director had already made his own study and successfully guessed pupils’ number 1 reason : ‘condoms kill pleasure’ (see table attached). In interviews, many students encouraged the project. At the end of the day, the director offered us a freshly burnt CD containing all favourite songs chosen by the students to prepare the workshop. This was done so that we could prepare music in the style most popular with the students.