Mail & Guardian Online - November 28, 2007
Surika van Schalkwyk

In South Africa, a range of organisations have devised innovative ways to educate people about the dreaded disease. Some use art, others theatre, but almost all realise how important it is to be interactive. One of these organisations, the Art Therapy Centre in Johannesburg, works mostly in communities affected by HIV/Aids where it focuses on healing through creativity. By using mediums such as drawing, painting, photography, clay work and collage, they create work that reflects the subconscious feelings of participants. The centre uses photography particularly well to help the orphans, who are encouraged to express their loss and mourn loved ones. "Many of these children live in a very transitory and unstable world, mainly because they have suffered multiple losses and thus have no memory with which to hold their world together," says Sarah Cohen Schwartz, project manager at the centre. Photographs are a means to aid memory and provide tangible documentation of the children's lives, she explains. They give a sense of identity, connection and reality to this world of vague experience. As external records, they also provide a safe way to talk about the pain, anger, disappointment and loss.

The orphans the centre worked with last year had an opportunity to exhibit their albums at the annual exhibition at MuseuMAfricA. Another innovative programme is Takalani Sesame, the first pre-school TV show in the world to tackle the issue of stigmatisation and HIV/Aids. The programme, co-produced with the South African Broadcasting Corporation, approaches the topic using an HIV-positive five-year-old girl Muppet named Khami.

Takalani Sesame has since also ventured into a bold new initiative to support the department of education's HIV/Aids curriculum for school-age children. The curriculum promotes dialogue about the disease, helping to humanise those affected, shatter myths and break down stigma in a way that children would be receptive to. These efforts have not gone unnoticed. Since 2003, Takalani Sesame has won six prestigious international broadcasting awards, the most recent being the Ribbon of Hope award in Los Angeles. It is the first TV programme to receive this award.

Johannesburg-based Themba Interactive Theatre uses theatre to inform the youth about HIV/Aids. The organisation was established in Sophiatown in January 2002 and has since touched the lives of 50 000 young South Africans. Eric Richardson, MD of Themba, says the effectiveness of the play derives from the participation of the audience, members of which can use their own languages in their interactions with Themba staff. "Themba methodology enables the information received by the participants to take on a greater and more personal meaning because participants enact different life scenarios and learn new 'life scripts'," says Richardson.

Memory boxes are another innovative way to fight the disease. These boxes give HIV-positive people the opportunity to say goodbye to the loved ones they leave behind. Although the boxes come in all shapes and sizes, from plump baskets to colourfully painted boxes or biscuit tins, they all have the same purpose: to offer comfort. The boxes contain anything from advice to souvenirs or photos and are designed to help cope with the disease, death and grief, and to plan the children's future.

Memory boxes or books go by the generic title of memory work. Many Aids orphans live with foster parents, on their own or in institutions. Cut off from their families, their memories fade and the orphans could grow up without a sense of their identity and origin. Memory boxes help these children to construct an identity and understand their past. Organisations in South Africa that do memory work include the South Coast Hospice in KwaZulu-Natal and the Sinomlando Project, an oral history centre at the School of Theology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Since 2002, the Memory Box Programme, an initiative of the Sinomlando Project, trains people working at the province's NGOs, faith-based organisations and community-based organisations to use memory work. More than 20 community organisations have signed partnership agreements with the organisation. Another initiative, the Memory Box Project of the Aids and society research unit at the University of Cape Town, has since 2001 initiated outreach programmes in Cape Town's Khayelitsha and Masiphumelele townships. The programme draws on narrative therapy to assist HIV-positive people to tell their life stories in a transformative way through memory boxes, books and body maps.

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