5.3 Support groups functioning as a community of practice
5.3.8 Identity building
118 which they held through the financial support of Ministry of Sports Youth and Culture earlier in 2013. Therefore, he was certain that his suggestion could benefit both the group and the community. Elderly-man reflects Wenger’s notion of ‘alignment’. He saw that their local products could effectively benefit the external population, thus going beyond the group’s own engagement. He foresaw the possibilities that through more determination the group could align the three support groups’ practices with the demands of their community.
Elderly-man: We need to be pro-active, plan for future to avoid boredom. We can utilise our multi-skills to establish a consulting firm of experts. We have knowledge as a big resource that no one has in our respective villages. We need to register with an umbrella body of people living with HIV so that we can be authorised to hold workshops for special groups I usually talk about. I have already researched that churches have included HIV education in their calendar, let us take the opportunity to collect as little as M100 from each church when we give HIV education. Then other activities will come up as we proceed.
119 Some group members had accumulated their knowledge in this way through monthly discussions over the past three years, although observations for this study only took place over a period of six months. As they became involved as equal members of the support group, they learned to reflect on their experiences, synthesise different kinds of information, effectively evaluate situations and make difficult decisions. Such decisions included disclosing their HIV positive status and reducing multiple and concurrent sexual partners for good, as a sign that their participation in the support group had made a great impact on their lives and had changed their behaviour. One man summarised the way in which the fathers-to-fathers support group operated to some visitors and newcomers:
Sticks: Maybe we can even show them that there are a lot of people who want to establish their own new support groups because they could see that our support group has made a great impact on our lives and that we have changed a lot since we have been meeting and learning together, which is easier because none of us considers himself number one while others are ‘number last’. Do you know why I like the way we are learning? It is because we are not writing tests since people like me left school because we were failing and hate tests. Look at us, even without writing tests we are male nurses and can cure a lot of them by only giving them knowledge.
Fathers-to-fathers identified themselves as male nurses due to knowledge gained through sharing experiences and learning together. Mothers-in-law (Bo-Matsale) also identified themselves as not just women but knowledgeable women who need to multiply in numbers. While in the mixed support group (Thusanang Bakuli) they identified themselves as a group of experts who know HIV from their own personal experiences and from the clinical point of view.
Mrs Boxer: The idea of putting us together to discuss HIV related issues was intended to make us understand our condition better so we adhere to treatment. But we have exceeded this intention because we are now educated referral points for our friends, neighbours, relatives and the community at large because they realise that we are not just women supporting daughters-in-law, but we are far more knowledgeable. … look at us, HIV education is in our blood.
These practices reflect Wenger, McDermot and Snyder’s (2002) notion of communities of practice where they emphasise the power of imagination as a mode of belonging that allows the community to see itself in new reflective ways due to its new competences that inspire
120 participation. Wenger et al. describe this learning as expanding one’s horizons so that one is able to access expertise from wider social structures in more efficient ways. For instance, the support groups constructed their image in the context of a bigger picture where they saw their new knowledge helping them fit into a wider resource network of experts.
The mothers--n law members identified themselves as ‘books’ with the understanding that one gains knowledge, information and education from a book that is similar to their manner of learning through sharing their experiences. The one narrating his or her story becomes a book to be read by other support group members. In the mothers-in-law support group, the chairperson laid the ground for the members to share with each other. When these members compared their understanding and acquaintance of medical discourses to being human books that can be read and from which information can be sourced, they illustrated an increased self-confidence and new sense of identity. This was what the chairperson had to say:
…Let me give a chance to the ladies who said they are our books to be read by sharing the stories of their experiences related to the Mother Baby Pack [MBP].
Mrs Peach, a woman in the support group responded:
Mrs Peach: I just want to allay your fears about contents in the Mother Baby Pack. It has proven to have all contents a mother and the baby needs pre- and post-natal. If you could remember, there was a time health workers were told to provide inclusive services. ‘Treat an expectant mother like you will never meet her again, in case she is not able to return for follow up services, then it becomes less of our worries’. Nowadays support groups are educated and are included in the health structure because there is a lot they can offer to the public educationally.
The support group now had such a reservoir of specialist knowledge about HIV. The chairperson compared the support group with an institution of higher learning, labelling it ‘university’ due to the efforts they were making in acquiring information for the group and ensuring that other people benefited from it.
Chairperson: Do not learn to forget these things ladies because if you want to think deeply you can realise that we have opened a university here in the hospital premises. Is it not so ladies? It is so. (All were shouting and clapped hands.)
121 Wenger’s (1998) theory reflects what this support group member was saying in relation to how learning impacts on an individual’s sense of self.
The different communities of practice had ‘become associated with finding, sharing, transferring, and archiving knowledge, as well as making explicit ‘expertise’, or ‘tacit knowledge’ (Wenger 1998, p. 1). The support groups created a comfortable learning space. In the process they benefited from and developed networks amongst themselves and other support groups as well as amongst connections from inside and outside the district. As a result, they crossed multiple boundaries.