Real lives: Willard Barure
SHAPE gender activist Willard Barure (right) asks fellow MSU students to try to identify people living with HIV just by looking at portraits. Photo: William Nyamuchengwa/OxfamAUS
Peer educator, Zimbabwe
Willard Barure, 23, is from Kwe Kwe, east of Gweru. He is studying marketing at Zimbabwe's Midlands State University and is in his second year.
Willard joined our partner organisation SHAPE in 2004 and is now a peer educator, gender activist and counsellor. He helped to organise the Miss BIG pageant, which was part of a students’ campaign against gender violence and he also belongs to a SHAPE pressure group that focuses on youth, drugs and substance abuse.
"I first became involved with SHAPE during Orientation Week. They held a talk show and then afterwards they asked for volunteers who wanted to go through masculinity training, so I took the opportunity.
"There was a time when I would not do certain things, just because I’m a guy. In my family we are two boys … we would not do dishes, just because we were boys.
"We would not play some other games, which are mainly associated with females. There was a time when you would just want to have sex just because you are cut (circumcised).
"Being trained by SHAPE was like an eye-opener for me. In Zimbabwe … in the cultural bodies and the family structures, you would not talk freely on AIDS, on sex, on other things like that.
"I was not aware of the risks that are around me. I did not think of how AIDS affects me as an individual. But here … we would talk openly about that … There was new information that was being passed on. So it was a different approach to what I had been exposed to.
SHAPE participants act out how HIV is transmitted and then attacks the body. Photo: William Nyamuchengwa/OxfamAUS
"[The] masculinity workshop changed a lot of the attitudes and perceptions that I had. It made up for all my information inadequacies. So, with all that information having been brought up on the table, I had to choose whether I still wanted to do that and I chose not to pursue those toxic masculinities … I welcomed the SHAPE team reaching out to me, so I decided to give something back.
"The most important thing that I do with SHAPE, is being a counsellor, when I actually get to share my life testimonies with other people and I get to listen to what they say. You need to not prescribe solutions for them, but actually to help them focus on their lives. Sometimes, people get here, but they don’t have a vision about themselves. They are kind of lost within the system. They are not sure of their purpose here and so you want to give them that.
"SHAPE is unique because it is more involving, the atmosphere is informal and it teaches you to see life from a different perspective. We are a family at SHAPE. You get to meet new people; you get to get new information and new ideas and just be a person of compassion.
"My involvement with SHAPE saved me. It provided me with an escape route where I could focus on myself and on my strengths, rather than on my limitations. I now feel useful and important as an individual.
"SHAPE has given me an opportunity to make a difference in my own life and in other people’s lives. I’ve become more of a person who doesn’t live for money anymore, who doesn’t live for many other things. I would just be fulfilled having somebody to talk to, somebody to touch … I think I’m becoming more of a person who is into people; it is the most important thing in my life now.
"All in all I am now the architect of my life."
Willard was interviewed by Maureen Bathgate.
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