The message is blunt, direct and in dramatic form. Free shows in schools, market places and wherever people meet, tell a story with the anti-AIDS warning, "change your behaviour".
The tale is of a father and son, living in the same home. Unbeknownst to each other, both of them are sleeping with the maid.
The son is a "man about town", with three or four girlfriends. One of his girlfriends hasn't yet slept with him. He proposes marriage and then pleads, according to a translation of the drama: "We have been in love for the last two weeks, why don't we have sex?"
She responds: "We are in the modern society, we don't have sex before marriage and we have to be screened for HIV before marriage." So the son gets screened and turns out to be HIV-positive. He confesses to the father: "I have committed sex with many girls, including the servant. So please excuse me, I have done wrong."
"You have AIDS and you slept with my servant," says the father, who collapses. He has realised he probably is HIV-positive as well. The maid, in the background, hears the revelations and realises that she, too, is most likely positive. It is a disaster. They are all HIV-positive.
But the message at the end of the drama is "having HIV doesn't mean the end of life. You can live if you take care of yourself. We have to tell others and teach them to change their ways."
Dramatic presentation is one of the most effective ways of getting a message across in an area where 70 per cent of the population is illiterate. The message reflects "the Dawn of Hope", the name of an organisation of people in the Ethiopian city of Bahir Dar, who are living with HIV/AIDS.
Azemach Mulate talk after the drama to students about being HIV-positive, how easy it is to get the virus, how people still look healthy in the early stages and how many people one person can infect.
Azemach, who got the virus from her now-deceased husband, wants to "motivate people to be responsible and to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS".
In 1994, Bahir Dar was the centre of a region with the highest known prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Now, says Holy Ghost priest Father Owen Lambert, "everyone, even in the remotest rural area, is very much aware of the situation".
