Elephants and Lions

This week I am teaching at Engalawony Village, about an hour out of Arusha.  To reach the village office, sitting in the center of the village, we drove down narrow paths on a bumpy dirt road over hills, through a jungle, and past dozens of men, women and children who stared at the foreign land cruiser and covered their faces with khanga wraps and blankets as the vehicle left behind clouds of thick dust. All plants, animals, and humans had a blanket of dust covering them (even before we passed) and those of us inside the vehicle had only a slight privilege to those outside.  The landscape we passed was like a dream: valleys of green fields lay between pointed hills, crops grew on the hillsides, laced with African plants and trees that distinguished one plot from the next; after a dark cloud passed the sun shone into the valley, rays brightening the world before it; herds of cattle and goats dotted the open land followed obediently by little boys or young men, while women carried tree branches twice the length of their bodies atop their heads and small girls guided barrels of water for the day's use. 

At the top of the hill at the village office we met our students for the week.  Thirty individuals dressed in traditional Maasai clothing, ranging from 16 to 50 years in age, sat in a semi-circle on the grass with the green valleys and hills laying the backdrop for our afternoon.  They greeted us with a warm welcome and remained focused and interested as we covered the material.  The day provided an entirely different setting of both students and environment compared to last week!  Questions arose as we explained the basic biology of HIV/AIDS; some wondered how bacteria is killed compared to viruses, others wanted to know why there is no cure for HIV. 

To help students visualize how HIV affects the immune system we do an activity called “Elephants and Lions.” In the demonstration one volunteer stands as a baby elephant, and six individuals surround the baby.  They are the adult elephants and are responsible or protecting the baby.  Four more volunteers stand outside of these elephants as lions.  The baby elephants is symbolic of the body, the adults as its immune system, and the lions as opportunistic infections such as the flu, malaria, TB, etc.  When given the instruction, the lions try to touch the baby elephant, and the adults try to protect the baby from being touched.  This demonstrates the role of the immune system in protecting the body from diseases.  Then the moderator acts as HIV, and removes half of the adult elephants.  Now the remaining three must try to defend the baby on their own.  As the activity continues, it is much more difficult to fight off the opportunistic infections when HIV infects a person because it destroys the person's immunity. 

This game is extremely helpful in explaining a critical part of HIV infections.  People do not die from HIV.  HIV destroys the immune system which heightens the risk of other infections and prevents the body's ability to fight them on its own, oftentimes resulting in death.  This explanation is usually received with a look of surprise and a nod of understanding from the students.  It is critical that people understand this in order to see the purpose of staying healthy and taking special precautions to prevent other diseases if one does become infected with HIV.