Stigma

We push our way up the hill to the dining hall in irregular formations, shouting a camp song at the top of our lungs.

"There ain’t no flies on us!
Yes there is!
There ain’t no flies on us!
Yes there is!
There might be flies on the Hula Girls, but there ain’t no flies on us!

There ain’t no flies on us!
Yes there is!
I said there ain’t no flies on us!
Yes there is!
There might be flies on the Buccaneers, but there ain’t no flies on us!"

The song springs up constantly, in the small cracks of each jam-packed day -- in line for meals, in the dining hall, on the way to the next activity -- tossed from table to table, cabin to cabin, boys to girls, girls to boys, camper to staff, camper to camper. And each time the song starts up again, I envision flies darting between us. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine, here in the mountains, with latrines and woods. The song is really about more than just insects, though. Someone “there are no flies on,” is bright and quick-witted, attentive, immaculate and beyond reproach.

Many of the campers have faced a great deal of reproach, or outright rejection, because their lives have collided with HIV. They have had to shout “There ain’t no flies on me!” again and again to a world that insists that there are, that treats the virus sucking them of their youth and health as a personal failing and punishes them for it.

Some of these children have been barred from attending their local school or been persecuted and ostracised in their communities after their HIV status was discovered. More have endured smaller humiliations like a classmate who takes extreme measures to avoid walking by them in the hallway. Some have been shunned by members of their own family. One girl is told by her cousin every time she makes a silly mistake, “That’s why you have HIV.” Most, fearing this reaction, are forced to guard a heavy secret from even their closest friends.

At camp, for a week, we try to create an affirming environment and take every possible opportunity to let each camper know they are accepted, valued, and loved. Throughout the day campers have many opportunities to succeed and be recognised as individuals and as a cabin, whether by initiation into the Polar Bear Club or a publicly posted High Five for being “caught in the act” of doing something great, or during activity rotations or a more private exchange. As part of the closing ceremony, campers are taken aside one by one and given a scarf on which their counsellors have written a character trait they have demonstrated throughout the week.

Here HIV is no secret. On the very first night of camp we acknowledge that we all have been impacted in some way by HIV or AIDS. The campers are encouraged to speak openly about the disease and the way it affects their lives each morning in SPEAK OUT and whenever it come up naturally in conversation. Here it is apparent that they are not alone, here HIV is nothing to be ashamed of.

Unfortunately one week of camp can’t fully make up for the rest of the year. But some campers are going further to bring change with their stories. The SPEAK OUT program has expanded from just a forum at camp for expressing and discussing the complex emotions, experiences, and challenges tangled up in living with HIV to a year-round speakers’ bureau where a small group of campers, some of them the same children who must keep HIV a secret in their own communities and families, travel to middle schools, high schools, and colleges throughout Southern California and the Midwest presenting factual information about the virus and sharing how they are “just a kid” whose life has been impacted by HIV or AIDS. Little by little, class by class, auditorium by auditorium, they are chipping away at the myths, stereotypes, and stigma that continues to shadow and perpetuate HIV, confidently, defiantly asserting that "There aint no flies on us!"

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Notes:

One of my "Thirteen Ways Of Looking at a Fly."

Someone “there is no...”
“Fly, n.1” The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.

Many of these campers...
These and other accounts can be found in the i know book, published by Project Kindle, which will be distributed in every health class in the LA public school district, and can also be accessed online at the Project Kindle website: http://www.projectkindle.org. Additional information about Camp Kindle and the SPEAK OUT program can also be found at the Project Kindle site.

An earlier essay I wrote about some of my experiences at Camp Kindle: http://allpoetry.com/column/2336858

(january 2009)