Homosexuality is illegal under the penal code in Ethiopia. It is seen as a disease and an inexcusable sin punished by jail time. The general population would like to claim that it does not exist.
With such stigma attached to homosexuality and HIV/AIDS, many people live in fear and denial.
The best way to empower people is to educate them, but how do you do that in a country that doesn’t allow open discussion of sex?
When Clinical Nurse Specialist, Jo Rees recently spent time working for a local non-government organisation called Hope for Children in Ethiopia, she was asked not to discuss homosexuality during her sexual health presentations.
Rees was involved in running a four-day train the trainer program called Let’s Talk about Sex in Ethiopia. Over 100 people attended the many training sessions including young people, in order to become peer educators, teachers, community educators and interested others.
The program consisted of 10 topics including sexuality, puberty, relationships, decision-making, assertiveness and negotiation skills, contraception, sexually transmissible infections and blood borne viruses and goal setting.
In the training manual she daringly included one single line discussing homosexuality and it turned into a hot topic.
‘It was amazing what happened,’ she said. ‘I was asking people to agree or disagree with certain statements and then we came to the statement “Homosexuality is found in all populations†and of course they all disagreed with that.
‘Some of them were quite derogatory and they were totally disbelieving of what I was saying but I am really passionate about this topic because of my work with young people over the past 20 years.
‘I told them, “I’m not asking you to like it, I’m not promoting it, I’m just educating you about itâ€.’
This was Rees’ second trip to Ethiopia and she says the country is slowly making progress because medical treatments such as anti-retrovirals are now available and subsidised by the government, whereas they weren’t on her first visit in 2005.
‘There is still some stigma around it (HIV/AIDS) but nowhere near the extent that it was three years ago,’ she said.
‘When we talked about homosexuality, a lot of people said that it doesn’t exist in Ethiopia but I informed them that there were actually two gay bars in Addis Ababa. I also compared the stigma attached to HIV years ago and the stigma about homosexuality today.
‘People were losing their jobs and getting kicked out of their homes if they were found out as having HIV because of the lack of education and information available.
‘That comparison made them think about it and I could tell they were keeping an open mind.’
Her discussion obviously had an impact because at the end of the ten-session program each participant was asked to present a 15-minute talk on a topic they had learnt. One boy dedicated his talk to homosexuality and several others mentioned it in their presentations.
‘The evaluations at the end were great – the thing they learnt the most about is that people should be treated equally.’
Rees says the outcome was mostly positive from the young people, although she did get some negative feedback from parents. The great thing was that the young people said that some of their parents/caregivers had also decided to keep an open mind about homosexuality.
‘This really was the most rewarding experience of my life’ Rees said.
The experience is one Rees hopes to repeat when she returns to Ethiopia in August or September this year.
Hope for Children’s website can be found at www.hopeforchildren.org.au
***
