Visiting the Tutu Tester Truck

Hello everyone from Cape Town!! As part of our study abroad experience, Ben (see below for his posts) and I have had the amazing opportunity to work at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation which has been such a rewarding experience and has taught me so much. Specifically, we are working at the Zimele Project, which is a multi-pronged prevention social and health intervention mainly geared towards adolescent boys and girls. Within the Zimele Project we are working to study the barriers and issues with uptake in sexual health and reproductive services for adolescent men in South Africa. This is mainly because there is a huge disparity in terms of social programs and interventions that focus on men, as many of the causes for HIV transmission stem from gender inequity. As a result, a lot of the interventions implemented by the South African government and various NGO’s focus on the uptake of sexual health and reproductive resources for women and not for men. Our research was centered around having five different Men’s Dialogue sessions, each specifically tailored to engage young men and help create settings to facilitate conversation and raise awareness about distorted gender norms and gender power in South African society. The first session was called the “man cave”, which included video games, food, and drinks for the participants that attended and the second session, which will be held on July 29^th, will be a Braai (South African barbeque) and focus on themes centered around consent.

During one particular work day, our boss Ndumiso took us to see the Tutu Tester Truck in action, at a township outside of Cape Town called Du Noon. The Tutu Tester Truck is a truck that goes to different townships outside of Cape Town and offers free HIV counseling and testing to the general population. Du Noon is the most densely populated township in Cape Town, and with that dense population comes a very easy risk of transmitting disease. When we arrived at Du Noon, the Tutu Tester Truck was stationed at a strip mall complex that contained a large Rite Aid. The truck was colored with a brightly colored rainbow that easily attracted the eye. There was a main truck, a trailer, and a large, open tent stationed right next to each other, which all contained different aspects of the operation (see picture). Under the open tent, a table and numerous chairs were set up, with one HCT counselor seated near the table. This is where people waited before getting called to register and see the counselors in the truck to get tested. On the table while they wait, several male and female condoms are spread out, with a plastic penis and vagina that people can use to practice putting on condoms. In addition, there is a big flip book that has different instructions of practicing safe sexual behavior on it that individuals can look at as they wait. Brochures about preventing TB infection and STI spread are laid out across the table. Ben and I were able to go through the entire process of getting tested and registered. First, we were called over to the registration table stationed outside of the truck and asked a few basic questions, such as where we lived, our phone number, and our age. In addition, they took our fingerprints and printed out a sticker which had a barcode on it. This barcode when scanned, would link right to our name and account in the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation records. After taking our height and weight, we were called into the truck and entered a small room with an HCT counselor. There, they asked us different health related questions about sex, condom use, STI’s, etc. In addition, they asked us about our blood pressure and family history of any health problems or diseases such as high cholesterol or diabetes. For obvious reasons, Ben and I did not receive the finger prick to be tested, but I was able to talk to the HCT counselor for a few minutes. She told me that this whole ordeal takes 15-20 minutes, and when I asked her how many patients she sees in a day, she replies that she sees about 30 girls, but rarely any boys. That was astounding to me, but it was easy to see even outside the truck that all of the people registering and entering the truck were women. This adds even more credence to the work we are doing with the Men’s Dialogue Sessions. No amount of literature you read can substitute the experience of actually being able to see the fact that men don’t come to these sexual health and reproductive services and there needs to be a change in how foundations deliver and advertise these services to men in South Africa in order to change the discourse and conversation about the spread of HIV.

- Arjun Mathur