If I can talk about rubbish for five minutes in return for the guy listening
for five minutes about sex and HIV, it's worth it."
Cheukai 'Che' Chiremba, a lively 24-year-old Zimbabwean, talked to Positive
Nation while working as a Health Promotion Officer at the Ugandan Community
Relief Organisation (UCRO) in north London. He described how he reaches
that supposedly hard-to-reach group: African men.
Che has the gab and the motivation. This is someone who started his own
HIV support organisation in Zimbabwe when fresh out of school at 19.
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In recent years, increasing numbers of male asylum seekers from all over
Africa seeking help for HIV problems have turned up at UCRO. Many would
be very ill. So Brent and Harrow Health Authority funded Che to perform
a huge task: go out and help men from any part of Africa talk about HIV,
sex and health issues. He now holds African Men's Group meetings all over
the area.
We'll meet in 'community centres', anywhere you'll find African men together
- bars, cab offices, church halls - all over my catchment area, places
like Willesden, Kingsbury, Kilburn."
But how does he meet the 'guys' in the first place?
