Coming home from Maputo to Inhambane province is a revelation.
Within 2 days we organized a group from school to work with, did HIV sensibilisation, composed and recorded a song, painted a mural, gave interviews in the radio with the group and played on the timbila festival in front of thousands of people. Yeah, and in the morning of the first day we recorded Venâncio´s timbila group to have the Timbila sample on this fantastic tune….. Zavala rules !!!!
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POSITIVO AND APTART, INHAMBANE, ESCOLA SECONDÁRIA DE QUISSÍCO, ZAVALA
The project was financed by The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
With 2 days to spare at the end of the PEPFAR funded tour, Positivo rallied their energies and decided to do a workshop and mural in Qussíco, Zavala Province. The timing was perfect. The journey back to Inhambane would pass through Qussíco and would coincide with the annual national Timbila Festival held in the city each year. A few phone calls were made, the Director of the Escola Secondária de Quissíco approved the workshop and Positivo secured a place to camp with a local volunteer.
Early in the morning before the workshop Positivo contacted Venâcio the leader of the UNESCO World Heritage timblia orchestra. Because of the timbila festival, Positivo wanted to incorporate some timbila music into the workshop and went to record a sample a live sample from his orchestra to use in our workshop.
At the secondary school the Director had already selected a group of 15 students for us to work with. They were the school’s HIV and AIDS activists and they had just come back from a week long seminar about HIV and AIDS. In spite of this, there were still grey areas of their knowledge about certain issues, for example the problems associated with when two HIV infected people have sex together. Therefore the Positivo seminar concentrated in these areas. The group was also very musical and they performed a song about how the consequences of HIV and AIDS can kill whole families. Positivo set to rectify this sombre tone with positive lyrics, that it’s possible to live a happy life with HIV. After an hour a rough draft of the song “HIV não tem idade” was recorded.
While the song was being polished in the mobile studio the students went off to paint the mural using the title of the song for inspiration. The mural location was a ten meter wall located in the centre of town on the main road to the central market.
When the song was finished Positivo visited the local radio station to hand over the song to the station controller. On the main day of the festival the song was played once an hour on local radio. The students also got to perform their song on the main stage of the festival on the Saturday night in front of 5000 people.
