The Mamelodi Cricket Oval is a neat, well-kept cricket ground that sits surrounded by rolling hills covered with rows of low houses, almost in the shadow of the impressive stadium home of the Mamelodi Sundowners. It is at the heart of Mamelodi, a township just outside of Pretoria established in 1945. It’s now home to around 335 thousand people – about the same population as Coventry for CWB regulars – and this ground is the hub for cricket for the whole area.
On arrival to the ground we were met by the coaches and players who were going to take part in the workshop. Younger than the group yesterday, and exclusively male, the session started off more boisterously, and gigglier on the mention of condoms and sex. Despite this, the initial feedback on questions they had about HIV suggested a good level of awareness of some of the options available to people, including PrEP and PEP, coupled with a few gaps in knowledge to fill in the details on a range of issues.
The giggly-ness gradually fell away as the day progressed, as the penny began to drop with these young guys that they were in a real position to influence and make a difference in the lives of the young people they coached. This shift in mindset was steered by the combination of increased knowledge and confidence in discussing the issues at hand, the “realist” approach employed by the team from Ezintsha that recognised and discussed the challenges that prevent young people accessing testing, treatment and protection, and by the early buy-in of senior coaches in the group, who noted that they already discussed some of these issues with their teams because it formed part of their duty to develop their players as whole athletes.
The highlights of the sessions were the questions asked by the coaches, such as:
- How long after you start taking ARVs is your viral load suppressed enough to have sex with your partner? (normally 3-6 months)
- Should we be showing young people how to use a condom properly? (yes, it’s in line with the South African governments policies on sexual and reproductive health)
- If your players who are under 18 want to do assisted self-screening, will the health care worker watch them do the test and automatically see the result, or will it still be private? (they can have someone with them, but if they want to, they can do it on their own in a secluded booth)
- Where can I get additional information so I can be well informed as a coach who’s delivering more than cricket?
As we got slicker and more efficient with the timings for the workshop, building on the first go at it yesterday, we had more time to allow coaches to have a go to develop activities linked to the messages on the flashcards. This culminated in an incredible strength and conditioning session, where the warm-up was PrEP (taken in advance to prevent injury) and the cool-down was PEP (taken after, to prevent injury). This proved a step too far for our very own Lee Booth who handled the chair carrying and tyre jumps with ease, but fell apart in the last stages of the sprints; perhaps a little more regular PrEP required!
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