June 15, 2006

African beats
Concord native helps Namibian youth
By Heidi Masek hmasek@hippopress.com

Jesse Lamarre-Vincent, 25, of Concord, lives in the Razorwire Palace Ondangwa, Namibia. Namibia has about as many people as New Hampshire, with a 25 percent HIV infection rate and 120,000 orphans under 15 years old.

As a Peace Corps volunteer, Lamarre-Vincent trains youth as peer health educators and has created after-school programs emphasizing the arts.

Beyond his official capacities, he helps his community any way he can. He started a nonprofit record company, Razorwire Palace Productions (razorwirepalace.com), helping kids record music or create modeling portfolios. Photos help girls raise their self-esteem, he said. “They’re famous in their own minds. They don’t need validation from anyone else.”

They call his house Razor Wire Palace because of its common theft-deterrent system.

Lamarre-Vincent majored in political science, international relations and studio arts at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. He’s thinking about law or graduate school perhaps in international development or peace and conflict studies. He talked to the Hippo last week while back in the states for his brother’s wedding – his first time here in 18 months.

You’re on the forefront of the fight against AIDS in Africa. Is there progress being made? Are there enough resources, are they getting to the right places?
I think that the real problem is bringing all the resources and the aid and getting it to the people who need it most, in the most rural places. That’s where people are sort of suffering the most. They’re farther away from hospitals and clinics. So it’s harder to administer HIV drugs, or it’s harder to keep track of orphans.

It’s an interesting time to be there because there really has been a push.… There are all these resources, there’s all of this information. There’s all these condoms. But taking all those resources and finding ways to connect them with the people that need them most – -there aren’t enough people on the ground doing that.

Your home’s apparently a gathering spot now. How did that come about?
People know where I live, and I never really turn them away. ...Kids will come to hang out and play chess or checkers, backgammon, I have board games and cards.... There’s so many negative things they could be doing. I try to make my house a welcoming sort of space where there are healthy activities going on. ...people have heard that there’s this white guy that will help you record your music and he won’t charge you any money. So I’m forever getting calls and text messages, “Mr. Jesse will you help us .…”

It’s nice to be busy.

Since this is a two-year program, do people who live there feel like there’s a lot of turnover, is that jarring for them?
I think especially for the kids, it’s sad to know that there’s a definite limit to the time I’m going to be there. What happens after two years when I tell them I’m leaving, and maybe I’ll come back to visit but that’s pretty much the end of my time there? Maybe I’m the only person who ever asks them how school is, or the only person who’s taken an interest in their music or their art. There can be a lack of role models because so many people are dying of AIDS, the older brothers and sisters and parents, there just aren’t a lot of young adult or adult figures necessarily for them to look up to.

And it’s hard for me too, to feel like maybe I’m filling this important role in their lives but I can only do it for this short period of time. Will I have enough of an influence that they will continue to make good choices after I leave? One of the hard things about being there is knowing you’re doing a lot of good, but then wondering how much of that will stay around when you’re gone.

I’d imagine with such a high infection rate, you might get close to people who pass away while you’re there.
It’s hard, but because death is such a reality and so many people are dying, you never have time to fully process or fully grieve because another person dies ... so often times you’ll find people get sort of numb because there is so much death. Death becomes less of a shocking thing to them whereas for us it’s this huge shocking event.... It’s hard to be around it, to watch people die and see people not react – it’s kind of shocking to think about how bad that situation is.

Did you feel prepared when you signed on for this?
I had no idea what I was getting myself into at all.

It’s been an amazing experience though. You learn to find ways to cope or you learn to get through your day. You find reasons to be positive and not despair. Alcoholism can be a huge problem there because a lot of people see the situation as hopeless and so the solution is they’ll just go get drunk whenever they can to get away.

There is hope.

You see children and they’re always smiling and playing and happy. They haven’t given up on life. You keep trying to educate the children as well as you can. And there’s always the possibility that they will fix the mistakes that have been made. Maybe they will keep themselves better protected from HIV. They are far more educated about it from a very young age.

A lot of people that come down will say it’s a hopeless situation – but I don’t think it is at all. It’s just that the focus has to be continuing to educate young people and continuing to support them so that you don’t start solving the problem and let it get worse again.

One of the root problems of HIV is that you’re not necessarily concerned about HIV, you’re concerned about finding something to eat or getting a roof over your head.

Regarding that, do you feel like there are any economic opportunities or changes for the better in that area? Kids – do they have something to look forward to?
I think more so than in the past, I think they do. I think at least in the cities and larger towns they’re realizing if they get a good education, they can go to university in the capital, and if they graduate from university they can get a good job. So I think the youngest generation of kids is realizing with a good education there are more opportunities for them, either in their country or in South Africa or in Europe or abroad. That education is a way for them to get out. And even small businesses – you see people starting small businesses and slowly developing the economy there.

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