The synopsis

The performance was about a young woman who needs money to take a sick child to the hospital. In the neighborhood there are two young ladies who do commercial sex to earn a living. She approaches the two ladies for assistance; they tell her that the best way to get money and take the child to the hospital is to accompany them to a night, a place where she will get money, more money. At night they go the night club and the girl with the sick child is introduced to a man who offers to pay her 5000 Ksh for a whole night unprotected sexual intercourse or 500 shillings for sex with a condom. The other ladies are pushing her to accept or else they do away with her. Should she take the big offer and serve the child or the small offer and loose the friends and the child?

The magnet theatre session

After mobilizing the community to the magnet theatre site the facilitator introduced the charters profile while the audiences give them names. During the presentation the following issues come out from the audiences/spectators, some the audience members argued that the young girl should go for the big money because the life of the child is more important than her life, one of the audience members said that better loose the child because she can give birth to another child, John a member of the audience said that the young to use a Condon and tell the man her problem, when asked how to tell the man John stepped forward and demonstrated how he will do it, but the people said that it was difficult to convince a man with such mind set, Mama Merry said that the best thing for the young girl to do is to fund raise for the child treatment from well wishers and friends, one member of the community who goes by the name Musa said that he will lead the fund raising for the child because the young girls may end up with an STI from the man and may be HIV so before it happens he is willing to lead a fundraising. The sessions ended with one member of the audience taking the young girl out of the stage just to make sure that the girl does not change her mind.

After the outreach the members gave out 400 male condoms and held one on one talk with the community members at the site. IEC materials distributed posters, and magazines with the following thematic concern ARV and VCT.

Issue arising from the Magnet Theatre session today

• Many people wanted to know more about malaria, its mode of transmission, prevention and treatment.

• We found that prostitution is in the area especially amongst young women between the ages of 16 and 27.
• Drug abuse is also one of their major concerns especially amongst to the youth where they abuse drugs like bhang.
• It was also proposed by some community members that we have a session with them and teach them about health issues generally.
• They also told us to take VCT to the site.

Key questions from the site include:

Why do people use condoms? Is it applicable to married people?

Does window period vary from one person to another?The above issues will be discussed in the next magnet issues.