Safe Journey Campaign: The Music

This article looks at the entertainment-education (EE) strategy developed as part of the Safe Journey campaign, at the centre of which was a music road show that aimed to raise HIV/AIDS awareness among SeSotho-speaking migrant populations in Lesotho and in the Free State province in South Africa. EE uses media such as music, radio and theatre to disseminate messages for change, while attempting to be entertaining or fun at the same time. It is based on the idea that people learn behaviour by observing models, especially models from the media.

Drawing on music and radio programmes developed with two particular groups in mind (the general population of migrant workers, and the institutions and policy makers responsible for their health and well-being), the campaign ran from December 6-15 2005 and was a collaboration between Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) Southern Africa and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office in Pretoria, working in partnership with Population Services International (PSI)/Lesotho, Harmony Mines, and the Society for Family Health South Africa.

The participation of well-known musicians was central to this campaign; the popular Lesotho-based group Bhudaza developed 3 new songs reflecting the lives and experiences of BaSotho migrant workers in South Africa while passing along messages touching on issues relating to HIV/AIDS. The songs include:

1. Qoleng Ea Kobo: focuses on prevention and awareness
2. Tlala Ea Bosiu: focuses on loneliness, while reminding people that a moment of closeness can have long-term impacts on the individual and their family back home
3. Koatsi (Ea Bosolla Hlapi): focuses on family responsibility, coupled with messages about discrimination affecting migrant workers and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).

These songs were designed with the EE strategy, and its pitfalls, in mind. Each song dealt with a different issue related to HIV and migrant populations. The songs aim to speak to people's life experiences rather than trying to lecture or 'educate.' Instead of telling people what to do, they appeal to their emotions and ask that they take responsibility for themselves and their families. The songs were released for broadcast on radio stations on December 1 2005 in honour of World AIDS Day.

The interval between music sets during live performances provided an opportunity for a peer educator to take the stage to quiz people about HIV awareness and to give audiences a chance to win one of the very popular Bhudaza "Safe Journey" concert T-shirts.

The series of radio programmes developed as part of the campaign are expected to further use the songs to guide themes and messages. At the same time, they will provide cohesion to help tie together the concert, the music and the radio programme, reenforcing the key messages being developed throughout.

In short, the strategy is based on the expectation that, if an individual is exposed to positive models who make informed decisions about their lives, the individual will also begin to form ideas that will result in positive and informed decisions. At the same time, the strategy draws on the awareness that social change often requires an element of advocacy and political will. A further caveat: “A major potential drawback to music as a communication strategy is making the messages too simplistic or blunt. There is a danger, especially in health-related entertainment-education programmes, to either reproduce the same messages over and over again, to tell people what to do or, in trying to keep messages easy to understand, end up with stereotypical or simple stories.”

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