Posts Tagged ‘HIV’

A Cause Worth Your Cash

Monday, May 4th, 2009

GAIA Vaccine Foundation, which stands for Global Alliance to Immunize against HIV and AIDS, is the organization that put me up while I was in Bamako in January. It was their clinic where Eduardo and Teresa painted the mural.

The founder, Annie DeGroot, is the most driven person I’ve ever met and her organization is among the most legitimate I’ve ever encountered. In addition to building and running the health clinic, GAIA is involved with HIV vaccine research in both Bamako, Mali and Providence, Rhode Island.

The organization is having its most difficult fundraising year ever and they are having a very hard time finding funding for three Brown University students to work in Annie’s Providence lab this year and then travel to Mali this summer. The research and work GAIA is involved with has the opportunity to benefit every person on the planet who is HIV positive and eventually everyone on earth. They need to raise $12,000. Annie is matching every donation dollar for dollar.

If you can donate some cash that would be amazing. I’ve given $50, but I’m sure they wouldn’t turn away donations of $5, $10, or $25. Thanks very much. The link to donate is below and I’ve also pasted Annie’s recent email.

GAIA Donation Page

GAIA Homepage

Here is the excerpt from Annie’s email

Please meet Julie Caplow, Sharon  Makava, and Lauren Pischel. These three young women would like to intern in my lab this summer (at EpiVax, where we’re still working on the GAIA Vaccine) and then go to Mali to work in the field. They will intern for free at the lab, but they need funds to travel. Their project is described in the attachment to this email.
We tried to fund them through the ARRA (Obama stimulus package) but they missed the cutoff. We’ve tried to fund them through Brown but Brown chose not to fund them. These are some of the greatest young women you’ll ever meet – - they volunteered for World AIDS day at Brown, they organized free HIV testing days, they’ve written grants and worked hard to get the funds to travel, but no luck, and time is running out. . .  and GAIA is experiencing one of the most difficult years ever for fundraising.
Will you send a check to GAIA to support their work in Mali? I will match every dollar you send. We need to raise $12,000. Can you give $500? $1,000? $100? I hope you can.
Here’s the address to send donations if you don’t want to use the web: 
GAIA Vaccine Foundation
146 Clifford Street
Providence, RI 02903
GAIA Is a 501c3
_________
Thanks for helping if you can. Spread the word.
Dan

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The Power of Murals to Inspire Change

Monday, April 20th, 2009

This video is an excerpt from an interview done with Ray Patlan. Ray is a prominent Bay Area muralist who grew up in the barrios on the south side of Chicago. He has partnered with Eduardo Pineda on several mural projects.

In this video he talks about how murals can inspire change in impoverished areas where people have never realized a sense of power in any aspect of their life. It’s pretty inspiring stuff and it definitely has a bearing on the work Eduardo and Teresa did at the clinic in Sikoro and overall the work GAIA is doing at the clinic.

I think very often we judge people whose lives we truly can’t fathom. Ray’s comments definitely helped me to understand that there are many people in our own country and around the world who have not had the opportunities I’ve had and don’t feel empowered to make change in their lives and in their communities the way people who have been privileged throughout their lives do. 

I agree with him that a simple artistic change of scenery can help to inspire that change.


Murals and Their Power to Change: Video from A Real Earl Production Documentary from Real Earl Productions on Vimeo.

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Teresa’s Photos

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

I wasn’t the only one documenting this trip. Teresa and Eduardo took a lot of amazing photos. Some of the photos you’ve already seen on the blog are Teresa’s.

Here are a bunch more:

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Better to Prevent than to Cure

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

That’s the title of the mural. However, it’s in Bambara so the actual title is Bana Kumbe Ka Fusa Ni Bana Furake Ye. It fits both the theme of the clinic and the mural.

The mural contains images regarding prevention of disease including references to HIV testing, washing hands before meals and immunization. The clinic does everything from HIV programs to infant vaccinations and weekly meals to giving vitamin A to kids. 

The mural is essentially finished. There is a bit of touch up and a few things nagging at Eduardo so the painters will spend a little time tomorrow and possibly Thursday finishing up.

I am finishing up filming at the mural as well and will be doing some interviews with people in the neighborhood to see what they think. So far most feedback has been extremely positive. One teenage girl today said the imagery helps convey the message that all women can come to the clinic for health concerns. Others have mentioned how beautiful the mural is and how much they appreciate the work that has been put into it.

People analyze the mural as they walk down the street. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Today was also an amazing day because I shot a lot of video of the babies being immunized, weighed and measure. The scene inside the clinic was a cross between a pediatricians office, the DMV and the vegetable aisle at the grocery store.

There must have been 60 women with their babies patiently waiting for their turn. They paid a bit of money and then their child received both a shot and a few drops of Vitamin A. Then the babies were suspended from a scale to check their weight and had their bodies measured. There was a lot of crying and tons of cuteness.

It was a particularly poignant day for me to see all of these tiny kids and know that just because I was born someplace else, opportunity is much easier for me to come by. That is certainly a lesson I’ll bring home with me.

There is a wonderful image of a baby being weighed in the mural so it was great to get that on video.

I also shot another sunrise today. I setup on the hill that descends into Sikoro and shot to the north for an hour as the sun rose to the east and bathed Sikoro in light. A police officer stopped and hassled me for a while. I told him I was a volunteer and he asked if I was a doctor. I laughed. He didn’t. He eventually left saying he would check on me at the clinic. He never showed.

Since the painting is basically done, I’ll be going to Segou for the festival this weekend with Teresa and Eduardo. We are all very excited. Spirits are high after completing the mural and every is happy to have the time left that we do and also looking forward to heading home.

Only a few photos today. It was a busy day of shooting.

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Taking Shape: 1/18/09

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

Today was a long day. I had the camera incident and the painting crew outlined the entire design on the wall. The entire form is now on the wall and people are noticing. 

As Teresa, Eduardo and Amadou paint and I film, we draw a crowd. The numbers ebb and flow throughout the day, but at its peaks it can be a chaotic situation. Cars, motorcycles, kids running, yelling, looking and all manner of people, goats and dogs walking down the street.

The presence of the kids and everyone else makes this a really rich and lively experience, but its also exhausting. The kids will surround the camera and asked to be filmed. Sometimes I just have to ignore them so I can work. But I can’t be that guy all the time so sometimes I engage them. Today we counted to 14 in both our languages and I had them repeat some tongue twisters and words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Tomorrow we are going to hit the big market. We haven’t been there yet. Then the painting continues. We’re in for a lot of work over the next two weeks.

Another cool thing today was that Mali was playing Rwanda in soccer. Tons of people were watching it. They were gathered around televisions out in front of people’s houses.

The funniest thing from today was just as the artists were finishing up, a handful of goats walked past the mural and dragged their bodies along the base of it to get a real good scratch. It was hysterical. 

Photos from today:

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Paint on The Wall: 1/17/09

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

We’ve had so much going on with running errands and getting our bearings and now all of a sudden the real reason everyone is here has begun to blossom. Today paint hit the wall and the actual mural work has begun. 

Teresa and Eduardo worked with a local artist who works at a nearby children’s center to cover the wall in white paint. Amidou, brought a few of his friends, Eduardo went into happy instructor mode and within 90 minutes the wall was covered. Eduardo working with Amidou made me think of the book I’m reading, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Without getting too much into it, basically I’m hoping this chance collaboration will help Amidou progress as an artist in a way that he would not have had this mural project never happened.

Once the sunset we returned to the clinic. This time to project the mural images onto the wall and trace them with pencil. This will allow Eduardo, Teresa and their helpers to complete the mural with a sort of template already on the wall. While they were painting and projecting, dozens of kids came by to check out what was going on in their neighborhood. It was quite a scene.

Today I also did a couple of interviews. One with Karamoko, the director of the clinic, and Rama, an HIV positive peer educator. Kara is great to talk to and Rama had a lot of very insightful things to say. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet them and discuss their work with them.

This evening Teresa and I went out for some drinks at a great place called The Diplomate. It is basically an outdoor island type bar with great music and an outdoor dance floor. We had a lot of fun cutting loose and dancing after a long day. While we were gone, Eduardo started filling in the color on the illustrated draft of the mural we have at GAIA house. Upon return, Teresa and I were scolded by our house guard, Salif. I think we may have stayed out too late, but I’m not sure. I can’t understand anything he says. All I know is that he means well.

Here are some photos:

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Full Mural Draft 1

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

I posted several snapshots of the mural drawing two nights ago. Here they are all stitched together. Since this draft there have been some revisions at the request of members of the Sikoro Asaco and some people associated with the clinic.

The mural design has basic elements of the clinic, the village and the GAIA organization. The two most prominent themes within the mural are the hands and the mango tree.

The mango tree is representative of a mango tree which is planted in the clinic’s courtyard. It was planted by Annie DeGroot and the village Chief. It represents putting roots down in the village and signifies the growth of the clinic and its offerings within Sikoro.

The large hands and many of the figures’ hands within the piece are representative of the clinic’s HIV education program called Here Bolo. Basically this uses the five digits on the hand to represent different facets of combatting HIV and its stigmatization.

thumb – espoir (hope)

index finger – identite (identity which means identifying whether you and your partner have HIV or not)

middle finger – transmision (transmission which talks about how the virus is actually transmitted and informs people about prevention)

ring finger – femme, famile, fidelite (this covers caring for and respecting women, family support of HIV positive people and remaining faithful to your partner)

fifth finger – community (the importance of a communal approach to fighting HIV/AIDS (fifth finger completing the whole hand).

All of these elements are represented in the piece within scenes under the mango tree which grows from a seed to a full tree providing shade and fruit to the community from left to right.

In this form the mural also looks like one of those pages from Highlights magazine where you try to find the differences. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow. Wow, now you’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Click the image to see it big.

 

The mural as of Wednesday 1/14/09.

The mural as of Wednesday 1/14/09.

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Sunsets Like a Dream: 1/17/09

Friday, January 16th, 2009

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. is a magical time to shoot video here. The temperature is perfect. The sky goes from blue to yellow then orange then red and pink. Mixed with the red earth and the haze from dust it is a majestic scene.

I’m trying to get out every evening to shoot around this time. Today I shot a lot of football (soccer). As 4:30 rolls around you see boys of all ages heading to areas all over town to play. It’s no wonder we can’t compete in the World Cup. The rest of the world is playing soccer everyday and in poor countries without cleats or shin guards.

Earlier in the day The Chief of Sikoro (dugutigi) approved Eduardo’s mural design. Tomorrow they will start on the wall. In the morning they’ll paint the wall white and then in the evening they will use a data projector to project images onto the wall which they can trace with pencil. Then they will darken the lines and begin to paint Monday. We have 16 days left.

We also strolled around our voisinage (neighborhood) today. We saw many beautiful children, hundreds of smiling faces and tragic filth. There was a beautiful garden and just beyond it a stream chock full of garbage, scum and waste. It makes me sad that the people and animals here live among such squalor. Then you stop and talk to people and they offer you fried bananas and the trash and filthy water melts away and all that remains is the happiness, contentment and generosity of these wonderful people.

Photos from today:

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