Awareness Campaign at Orang Asli Village

As I had mentioned in a few of my earlier postings, this year for the first time, Buddies would be organising an event on our own in conjunction with the World AIDS Day. And our plan was to have an awareness campaign at an Orang Asli village in Perak.

Sunday, 6th December 2009 – D Day of the programme.

There were supposed to be 6 of us making a move from our centre in Ipoh, including one who already knew where the OA village was and would be showing the way. But he was feeling unwell, and although at first he figured he’d still go to show us the way, we told him to get a rest – we had already been given the directions to get to the place, and so we’d find our way there. Besides, Su Win, the lady who helped to disseminate the info to the kampong folks, could be contacted by hand phone and I had saved her number in my phone.

So 5 of us made a move from Ipoh in 2 cars. Madam Chair took in the passengers (all ladies) while vice-chairman, who could only take in one passenger because he had the projector screen in his car, drove alone. 3 other volunteers, who stay in other towns, were to meet up with us at the junction heading to the village. (Hey! How come the chair and vice-chair always ended up as the drivers? During our retreat to Cameron Highlands in June this year, we went in 2 cars and the same 2 became the drivers as well. I wonder if it’s part and parcel of becoming the chair & vice-chair!)

The village we were heading to? Kg Sg Genting, near Chenderiang.

We took the PLUS highway, exited via Gopeng then headed towards Kampar. The junction would be before we reached Kampar, ie the junction heading to Sg Siput Selatan.

It was only when we were already on the way that I remembered to ask if anyone had taken along condoms for our condom demo. I was too busy putting in all the mechanical gadgets (projector, loud speaker & notebook) in my car, I totally forgot about the condom! Aiseh! No 7-11 on the way and definitely no shops selling condoms at the OA village.

When we got to the junction where we were supposed to meet up with the other 3 volunteers, I called up one of the volunteers and was told that he’d take another 10 to 15 minutes to get there. So our vice-chair waited at the junction while we ladies went to look for condoms! The small shops didn’t look like they’d sell condoms (we saw kedai motor and kedai perabot and a mamak restaurant – we’d look real desperate if we had actually stopped and asked if they sold condoms!!) and so we decided to head to Tesco Kampar which was just about 10 minutes away. Imagine one of our ladies going there and queuing up just to pay for a pack of 3 condoms when the other shoppers were queuing with trolleys filled with loads of stuff!

Anyway, by the time we got back to the junction, the other volunteers were already there and so we continued our journey to Kg Sg Genting with me leading the way. The instruction I remembered most was that we’d be passing under the highway bridge once and the kampong would be right before reaching the next highway bridge. As such I drove until we saw the second highway bridge, stopped by the roadside and called Su Win. We weren’t that far off, just turn back and find the first junction on the right, which was just nearby.

And so we finally reached Kg Sg Genting…

The building where the talk was held.

There were power sockets at the above building, but the electricity meter was not. Sudah kena potong I guess. But Su Win had kindly arranged for a long extension wire to get electricity supply from the nearby house. Only problem was, there was only one socket available. Thank goodness my notebook had been fully charged, and so should be able to last about 3 hours on batteries. Likewise, the loudspeaker too had been fully charged and should be able to last for 2 hours usage. And so, we had to give priority to the projector to get the electricity supply as the projector wasn’t rechargeable.

Posing while waiting for more OAs to come.

Explaining to the OAs about HIV and AIDS.

At least they seemed attentive enough…

Not to me but to the screen…

Even these kids were paying attention.

OK, listen up people! This lady here is gonna show you how to use the condom properly… with a real life… ermmm… BANANA!

Oh OK, so maybe the banana she bought was a wee bit too big…

See the smiles during the condom demo?

No questions asked during the talk itself but this group of ladies did ask me privately after the talk, during makan time. At least they were interested enough to know more.

Makan time!

Volunteers & Su Win in a group photo after the talk.

Packing up our gadgets after the talk.

With one of the OA families after the talk. This house was where we got our electricity supply from.

This was not only our first time organising our own World AIDS Day event, it was also our first time giving talks to OAs. We were not expecting any changes overnight. To us it was good enough that a group of OAs were willing enough to come and listen to the talk.

Hopefully that was just a start to more awareness amongst the Orang Aslis.