Not interested in hiv/aids?

“Those of you who don’t want to work with hiv/aids activities can join my group.”

Sounds a bit strange? Rannveig and I are in Ijevan, a medium sized Armenian town not far away from Azerbaijan and Georgia. The youths here already have a hiv/aids program, and Rannveig who is an Active Choice volunteer in Norway, is eager to work with this group. What I will work with for the next few weeks is a bit more uncertain.

After many hours of socializing, drinking tea and eating cookies all the volunteers have arrived at the Red Cross office and our meeting can begin. We introduce ourselves, and talk about what we are interested in working with. I say that I am interested in International humanitarian law(IHL), and that I would like to work with it. I also make it clear that I am here, first and foremost, to work with something that the volunteers are interested in, and an activity that will benefit the community in some way.

While saying this I sometimes forget to stop for translation from the youth leader, David, who is going to Norway next year. One of the major challenges working in Armenia is that most people don’t know much English. However, the volunteers here in Ijevan are eager to learn, and bring the dictionary with them almost everywhere.

We ask the volunteers to choose what they want to work with, and 6 people fit into the category “not interested in working with hiv/aids”. Luckily, the two guys with the most English skills chose to be in different groups. When I meet my group again later that week, we spend some time with yellow post-its and brainstorming. We manage to narrow our interests down to two main subjects; strengthening the volunteers computer and English skills, and working with IHL. Since Ijevan has two American peace core volunteers working in that field, so we decide to focus on IHL.

Our plan so far, is to visit the university and the colleges here to give them a taste of what IHL is about. First, however, both the volunteers and I need to refresh our knowledge about IHL. It will defiantly be a challenge for us discussing difficult topics with difficult terminology. But with lots of patients from both sides and a dictionary, I am sure we will succeed.