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Table of Contents
World AIDS Day Phone Interviews
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Country Facts
- Official language: Spanish
- Capital: Panama City
- Population: 3,000,463
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Originally, I had visited Panama in the summer of 1974 when I drove by myself in my small Fiat 124 convertible from the Grand Canyon to Panama City on the Pan American highway and back in less than five weeks. It was an adventure (I kept extensive notes and sketched drawings). Back in those days, the roads along the way were in much rougher shape than today. I remember being surprised how different each country was. To this day, I can sometimes recognize features that suggest a person is from El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Costa Rica. The cultures of each Central American country are different too although the problem of many Norte Americanos is too assume that every Spanish speaking person south of the U.S. border is Mexican – or the same. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I was in San Jose, Costa Rica for World AIDS Day, 2005 and after a week of outreach in the country, I decided to fly to Panama City for a few days of talking with youth. I arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning, December 10. I talked with street youth and Xmas partygoers until about 3:30 AM before going to sleep. In the late morning I switched hotels to be closer to the city center where I could walk more for my outreach.
Saturday is market day and it was especially busy because of the holiday shopping. I walked all the streets along the Plaza Cinqo de Mayo and had some great interchanges with young people. I find that it is difficult to stop people who are walking fast so I first look for people shopping, especially in groups. I passed out my Spanish info cards to about 300 youth in four hours while sampling some barbecued street meats. One young girl of 17, Carmela, asked whether kissing her boyfriend was a problem for HIV transmission. This is a question I get asked a lot by girls (the answer is no). Her girlfriends giggled but filed the news away.
It was here that I met a 20 year old youth named Andreas who was very interested in why I would want to walk the streets alone in a foreign city. Didn’t I know it was dangerous, he asked? My street Spanish is good enough to make conversation as long as it is understood that I need to hear Spanish spoken slowly. I explained that I have traveled alone all over the world and rarely had problems. After a fast food meal in a Chinese restaurant (why did I think it would be tasty?), he brought me to the old city where I talked in plazas and parks before doing outreach on a strip of clubs called the Causeway. Here, I met a more upscale Panamanian crowd of young people. I usually avoid people drinking but the ones I encountered weren’t sloppy drunk by any means – just going out for holiday spirits. Most were university students including a number from Venezuela and Colombia (where I had been in 2000). One guy asked about oral sex and whether two condoms should be used with prostitutes. One thing I have noticed in Hispanic cultures, is a wider acceptance of young males visiting prostitutes for early sexual experiences.
Sunday morning, I asked the staff of the Hotel Soloy where I should go to do outreach in poorer barrios, especially those neighborhoods known for their soccer rivalries. Sunday is their football day. People of all ages turn out to see their men play the game. They kept saying that I should not go to some barrios that could be dangerous but I knew during daylight hours there would no trouble as my experience has shown me.
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Soon after returning home to the United States I received this Email from Raphael who lived in the barrio where I was robbed. My spanish is not excellent but he is saying that they felt sorry that this happened to me and wishes me good luck with my work.
-Dr. John SPANISH.... LO SIENTO MUCHO DOCTOR SON COSAS QUE SUCEDEN A DIARIO EN PANAMA, USTED ME DIO UNA DE ESAS TARJETAS.. EN LA CENTRAL Y LE PEDI QUE PORFAVOR LE REGALARA UNA A UN AMIGO MIO QUE ESTABA VENDIENDO HOT DOG.. BUENO LA VERDAD ES QUE EL TRABAJO QUE HACE USTED ES ALGO QUE LA SOCIEDAD Y TODOS DEBEN DE VER YA QUE ES ALGO MUY BUENO LO QUE ESTA ASIENDO... ES MEJOR PREVENIR ANTES QUE LAMENTAR.. QUE DIOS TE CUIDE Y TE BENDIGA DOCTOR CHITTICK.. (PANAMA, 24 OF NOVEMBER OF THE YEARS 2005) MY NAME IS RAPHAEL ERNEST BALLESTEROS MY GHETTO IS (CHORRILLO). AND I AM RAPERS TANK YOU DOCTOR, raphael
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On a dangerous mission
By Marisa Donelan
From the Fitchburg Sentinel, December 17th, 2005
FITCHBURG -- John B. Chittick said he had just finished watching a soccer game in Panama City on Dec. 11 when he was robbed and hit by a car.
The international volunteer had recently traveled to Central America for his nonprofit mission, TeenAIDS, which counsels teens on the dangers of AIDS.
The 57-year-old Fitchburg resident attended the Dec. 11 game to meet some of these teens, and spend about 5-10 minutes giving what he calls "AIDS attacks," quick introductions and encouragement to spread knowledge about the disease.
"Sunday is the day that everybody turns out," he said Thursday. "It's like a festival. I knew there would be a lot of kids there."
Before the game started, he met with five young men and talked to them about HIV and AIDS. He remembered one of them told him he was 29 years old and the father of four children.
After the game, the 29-year-old was sitting in a dark green car and whispered to Chittick.
"I'm sick," he said in Spanish.
Chittick said he assumed the man had been too embarrassed to ask questions in front of his younger friends, so he approached him, carrying his video camera in his right hand.
"I went over to talk to him, and the next thing I knew, he grabbed the camera from my hand," he said. "I think he was surprised when he realized the strap was around my arm. I reached around to try to punch him, but he put his foot on the gas to take off."
Chittick said he was able to run with the car for about 4 feet, but then he fell and was hit by a wheel. He suffered cuts, bruises, ripped tendons and a chipped elbow from being dragged by the car. Four days after the attack, he could not use his right arm and had deep cuts on his hands.
"So, I'm gonna live, that's not the question," he said. "It was more just the shock that the guy hurt me and took off. Something like that had never happened before." Still, Chittick said he has been arrested, pickpocketed, followed by foreign secret service agents and threatened with kidnapping. He said in some countries, authorities perceive his message as unnecessary or dangerous.
But he said last week's assault would not stop him from future trips.
To Chittick, the needs are simply too great.
Over six years, he's traveled to 72 countries spreading his message.
He spent much of the two-and-a-half week trip to Central America in malls, schools and universities.
But on weekends during missions, Chittick prefers to visit the poorest neighborhoods in a city, where children cannot afford to attend school and must work to support their families. The volunteer, who always travels alone, is often warned to stay away.
"People told me not to go; they said it was too dangerous," Chittick said. "A lot of kids in poor areas overseas cannot go to school. They can't pay for books, they can't pay for their teachers. Even though there are public systems, it's not like here."
Man on a mission
The international headquarters for TeenAIDS is the basement of Chittick's Fitchburg home. Among computers and file cabinets, he has pictures of teenagers he's met on his journeys and toys for his "favorite buddy," a Labrador retriever named Jazz.
Chittick, who received a doctorate degree in human development and psychology from Harvard in 1994, founded TeenAIDS in 1996 because he predicted that teen HIV and AIDS rates would grow. He said the United Nations released statistics showing that half of all new AIDS cases worldwide occur in teenagers and young adults.
"The number of new AIDS cases is 25 percent among 13 to 19-year-olds in the United States alone," he said. "These are unbelievable numbers."
Chittick's missions are assisted by volunteers and private donations. He refuses to be affiliated with any church or government program that would influence his message. His method of outreach is simple. In areas as nearby as Fitchburg and as far away as Vietnam, he approaches teenagers asking for their help. He tells them in order to save lives, they must tell their friends to be aware of the disease's dangers.
"I always ask them what they want to be. I tell them, 'If you want to be a teacher, if you want to own a business, it's important that you don't get AIDS so you can have a life,'" he said. "A lot of kids don't make the connection between having sex now and getting AIDS later in life."
He said he has no difficulty approaching teenagers and getting their attention. He said he uses jokes and stories. "I use humor to relate to them. I wear Hawaiian shirts always. I am a fat guy," he said. "I look very strange when I'm walking down the street, especially when I tell them I'm a doctor working with AIDS."
When he's not traveling, Chittick keeps busy writing and drawing. He is working on a book about TeenAIDS, titled "Teens, Sex and AIDS: The Global Walk of Dr. John." He is also finishing an 80-page book about Fitchburg he illustrated himself. Because of his injury, however, he will not be able to finish it before Christmas.
Fitchburg teenagers have played an active role in TeenAIDS by helping with his Web site, www.teenaids.org, and local outreach, he said.
"My philosophy is that we can stop HIV among teenagers if we get them to talk to their friends," he said. "But it's not going to work if that message is only coming from adults. I want to start this army of teens going around the world to talk to others about AIDS."
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