"I learned some French and several African languages, such as Somalian. So I see a guy on the street and he looks Somalian. I say a few
words to him in his language. He's intrigued - he can see I'm not from
his part of Africa. We start chatting, just rubbish, nothing HIV-specific.
I'll slip the topic of HIV into the conversation. You'll get: 'Nah man,
Somalians don't get HIV. We're Muslims, we don't sleep around.' I'll say:
'So you never, say, had a cousin who got pregnant and had to get married?'
And we're away."
Che's 'chapters' may have very different ethnic makeups. "I meet
men from Zimbabwe, Uganda, a few South Africans. Even some Jamaican and
Trinidadian guys have started to turn up. One group is very west African:
Ghanaians and Nigerians - a lot of denial there, because there HIV prevalence
is 'only' five per cent. Another is full of guys from the Congo (ex-Zaire).
"The first Congolese group I did, seven or eight people turned up
the first time. The next time, we had 25. It just spreads by word of mouth.
"I do what I call a Socratic approach. That means, never lecture,
never do 'workshops' - men hate that. Try and get them to ask and answer
each other's questions. I only intervene if guys come out with info that's
wrong."
What are the main concerns the men raise?
"Putting off having an HIV test. One saw his girlfriend die with
Aids-related meningitis but still wouldn't go for a test. It turned out
he had another girlfriend; how would he tell
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her if he had HIV? Men see a positive diagnosis as the end of their plans
