The Story of a Former Sex Worker...and an Apology for Feeding the Stereotype

 Today, I interviewed a woman who had previously been a prostitute. She has HIV, 4 children, and a fifth who died this past April.

An Australian couple that I met through one of my former housemates, had mentioned this woman at dinner one evening soon after I  arrived in Rwanda. They told me they were supporting a woman who had been a prostitute, but then became a Christian and stopped. But she has 4 children and no way to support herself. Today she explained to me that she has HIV, and had been washing clothes for about 500Rwf (less than US $1)--hardly enough to support her family, when she quit prostituting. But she has been too weak, despite being on medications, to continue this work.

The couple explained to me the precariousness of the situation. They said it was against everything they stood for because they wanted to help but they didn't want to create a state of dependence that could just make things worse. But they said they weighed the options and realized that if this woman didn't have their support, she literally wouldn't be able to feed her family. And if--or frankly, when--she dies, there will be four children who will have nothing, no one. So what could they do? The husband told me that when it comes down to it, if someone is knocking at their gate--as too often happens--and they're hungry, he can't possibly turn them away. He hopes that if they come back, that he and his wife can start to get to know them, know about their family and their background. You should teach a man to fish, yes--but what if you just can't? What if you just don't have the time to teach everyone to fish? And you're just one person? What is the right thing to do? What is the wrong thing to do?

Our fates are intricately and inevitably entwined with one another.

Every day that you walk in the streets of the city, you're pretty much guaranteed to be asked for money or food from someone. I suppose most cities are like that. One of my favorite quotes is from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: "

     You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
     The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
     They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
     Surely he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy of all else from you.
     And he who has deserved to drink from the ocean of life 
     deserves to fill his cup from your little stream.
     And what desert greater shall there be than that which lies
     in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving?
     And who are you that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride,
     that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
     See first that you, yourself, deserve to be a giver, and an instrument of giving.
     For in truth, it is life that gives unto life--
     while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

Of course, the world of development and foreign aid is learning that just giving isn't enough. Sometimes what you "give" makes things worse. So maybe the lesson here is just that we should not ask ourselves whether to give, but how to give. But regardless, give. Yet be critical in how we do so.

One of my Rwandan friends told me that it wears on him just as much as it wears on foreigners to hear people ask him for money. He said he never turns away a woman. He asks for their story, and he just can't ever turn them down. Maybe it makes him a "softy" but he just can't do it.

Maybe it does make him a softy. And maybe it's ok to look upon the world with soft eyes. Maybe that's what we need.


....Well, I'm afraid I've done it again--yet another story about the plight of the poor in Africa. Stereotypical. I know. I hate it. I really do. I want to give you more of what I see here than just the sob stories, and yet that seems to be all I'm giving you. I come here and I'm filming and I'm leaving with stories about genocide and about an impoverished woman who felt she had no other option than prostitution. I wanted so desperately to be able to come back with something refreshing, something new--a story you haven't heard before, a story that really, really begins to re-humanize our fellow human beings in this tiny little country on this not-so-distant continent.

But I'm afraid that it seems the stereotypical stories are the ones that catch my eye the most. Or maybe they're just the easiest ones to tell because they only scratch the surface. Plus, the other stuff just seems so "regular", so commonplace to me and to you that it seems boring to put down in words on a screen for you to read. I'm afraid I'm not gifted with making the every-day sound interesting.

So maybe that's why they're so "stereotypical" and not quite good enough, in my opinion. But here's the thing: even though these stories are stereotypical, they're not un-real. Maybe the genocide stories have been told before, but these are still real people dealing with its repercussions. And if I don't communicate their whole lives well enough, then it's me, not them. Know that these are people who farm and people who cook and people who fall in love and are prone to hate and who sing in church and dance in clubs.

It's too easy to see people as victims when we hear that some terrible fate has befallen them. I'm just as guilty--I catch myself doing it more often than I'd like to admit, and perpetuating these attitudes when I'm in a position to change them.

Last summer I remember talking to Lindsey and just reveling in how resilient the little girls were where we were volunteering at Hekima Place, the home for girls who had been orphaned by AIDS (my blog from last summer). It wasn't that they weren't affected or that they weren't struggling--they were, but they still weren't defined by this one (or several) thing(s).

I showed my and Lindsey's film about two of the girls (The Story of Beth and Mercy) to a friend here and was talking to him about it, and he said that he thinks it's just that people here don't expect a perfect life. They don't take it for granted that they'll have two healthy parents with them their whole lives or that they'll get everything they want out of life.

But isn't that life for us all? None of us get it all. It's funny because living in the US we seem to have so much more than other people, and yet we don't seem any happier for it. How is that?  Don't get me wrong--I don't think that just because Americans have more money that they should be happier--money won't make you happy. And having money can't protect you from the pains of life and human interactions. But all of us, the world over, would be a lot better off if we could just begin to appreciate what we do have and just "be gracious."

So maybe that's my "rant". But I've had way too many conversations here--or maybe just enough--about how Africans are portrayed in the media--the only looking glass into Africa that most of us in the Western world have. We only see the bad stuff. It sort of makes sense, though--we only have so much time to take in so much information about the world around us, and so we only make time for certain things. It's a circumstance of time, perhaps. There's Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine in the Middle East; there's European Union and finance and politics business from Europe; there's human rights abuses and economics from China; and there's war, poverty, and disease from Africa. It's worthy news. It is. But there's a point where all of our news-reporting just becomes mind-numbing, and numbs us to the people we're hearing about. It's a stagnant pool of information. We see victims, we see people who need "saved" and we are quick to cry or to rush out and "help" however we can. It's admirable, I think. Compassion is always admirable.

But I had to laugh when I was standing around listening to a Rwandan man talk about a man he met with a black t-shirt on with the silhouette of an African child crying printed on the front. This man in frot of him was there to "save the African children". The Rwandan man telling the story said he thought to himself, "You have your own children to save. Why don't you go save them?" It was just funny to him, to see this man, so sure of himself, so proud that he was here to "save". But what did this man know of these children? What did this man know of the people he was seeing?

Yes, deep down, we're all human, and we're all caught up in each other's lives. But that doesn't mean we are all the same, or that we should be. There's not one way to be, one moral life to live, one path to being "saved". And there is a difference between compassion and pity.

This was just another funny story told in a gathering among friends. And I hear this attitude all over. And really, it's not that people don't recognize that there are problems in their country and that they could benefit from outside support, but it's the attitude that people come here with. Too many people are more concerned with being the savior than with really helping. I think if I've learned anything, it's that part of helping means admitting you don't know how to help and just sitting down to listen. It also means admitting you make mistakes. A lot of them. A whole, whole lot of them. It's expected, because it is different here.

All I ask is that you remember that there's more than meets the eye--or the ear.

Sex workers and Sugar Mamas

In Rwanda, sex work is legal. There are, of course, a lot of risks--from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (sex without condoms is common, and even pays more at times), to unwanted pregnancy (other forms of birth control are also not always used--for financial reasons as well as social reasons), and violence. But for some women, it's their only option. Some of the women FHI works with start while they're still in secondary school just to pay school fees.

FHI, the organization with which I have been interning this summer, has begun targeting sex work with its Regional Outreach to Address Development Strategies for HIV/AIDS (ROADS) project. They have set up Safe-T-Stops all over East Africa at popular trucking stops to distribute condoms, educate truckers and sex workers about HIV/AIDS and other STIs (some of which can make you more vulnerable to contracting HIV), and, quite simply, to give truckers something else to do in the evenings--like play pool or watch TV. 

A trucking job is a great job to get--it pays about 3x more than the average Rwandan wage. But as a result of the job, these men only spend an average of about 50 days at home per year. And, on top of that, they've got a little extra cash. And the sex workers come to them. It's a choice, yes, but let's be frank-- it's a choice complicated by circumstance and biology. 

FHI has organized groups in various districts around the country to mobilize communities against HIV. They have "clusters" for low-income women--some of whom are former sex workers, some of whom are economically vulnerable and thus prone to engage in sex work, and some of whom are wives of truckers. They've also now begun training current sex workers to be peer educators about HIV, condom use, and other matters of reproductive health, so that they can reach out to their fellow sex workers. Most commercial sex workers are not open about their livelihoods, so peer-to-peer communication is really the only way to reach them.

Truckers aren't the only clients, though. A great deal of the transactions actually happen in hotels, where a sex worker is just a phone call away. Wealthy men and foreigners are the ones who are the clients there. And driving around the city at night, I see women lingering on the corner who are, undoubtedly, looking for their next client. 

So what's the solution? I think the best we can do is try to make it so that a woman doesn't have to engage in sex work to feed her family; that if a woman thinks it's wrong, then she should have other options; and if she does do it, that she's safe. 

Rwanda actually seems to be really targeting women's rights issues. Sex work isn't the only issue where gender and economic inequalities cause problems. All over the country I see billboards like this one:

and this one

discouraging sugar daddies and sugar mamas. I'll admit, the idea of a sugar mama was unheard of to me--but my friend explained that a lot of women lost their husbands in the war and the genocide. And the way to gain respect in the village is to give birth to children, plus they have land that they need to pass on to their children and need children to help run. So they need to have babies. But they are older and not as likely to find a husband. So they attract young men and offer to be their "Shuga Mami". Sexual inequalities--both in Rwanda and in the US--are not always limited to female victims.

There are also ads all over the country urging the fight against gender based violence, as well as encouraging condom use. It all seems encouraging. Women's rights has made huge strides in this country, and it appears that it will continue to do so.


A short but interesting article: Former Sex Workers Fight Prostitution

Walking around Rwanda, this is what I see...

I walked out of my office today after work and turned out onto the busy road that leads up the hill into the heart of the city. The air is warm and the sky is overcast, but the chance of rain is highly unlikely given that we are in the middle of the dry season. I walk up the hill past the infamous St. Famille church, past vendors with large plastic bowls filled with cookies and tissues and cigarettes atop their heads, past the occasional school-age teen looking over her schoolwork under a small tree in the grass. The sounds of construction work slowly fade as I move farther away from the road-expansion crews further down the hill. A large skyscraper, one of only a few here in the city, stands tall at the top of the hill still under construction as I approach the roundabout. A large fountain graces the middle of the traffic circle, and several streets spoke off from it. Shops line the streets, some with open doors, others with the whole store front open, selling cell phones, radios, and computer parts; dresses and shirts; and any number of other miscellaneous items that you find you need in our modern societies. 

While there are still many open sewers, particularly outside of Kigali, there are many closed sewers as well. That had been one of the government's initiatives was to get rid of the open sewers. The sewers are the reason that plastic bags are illegal in this country. Now, people mostly use small paper bags. The plastic bags clogged up the sewers, whereas the paper bags break down. I hadn't noticed any sewage smells until a couple weeks ago when I was walking near one of the busier parts of the city and there was a terrible smell, and I looked to my side and there was a large open sewage area. Other than that, the odors that fill my nose tend to be limited to the smell of car exhaust. I don't know much about cars, but from what I do know, it seems that cars here tend to have pretty bad exhaust pipes. Looking out over the city, the familiar haze of pollution in the air softens the view.

The city is busy now as everyone makes their way home, some in their own cars, some on moto-taxis, and most in the public taxis (buses which are privately owned by subject to regulations by the Ministry of Transportation), which you'll find completely lining the road for thousands of feet, separated by the areas of the city they service. 

I've come to prefer the motos for their speed and ease, despite their expense relative to the bus taxi. What might cost 200 Rwf (Rwandan francs), or equivalent to about 40 US cents, on a bus might cost me 800 Rwf (mostly because I just don't bargain down as much as I could sometimes), the equivalent of US$1.25 on a mototaxi. Before I came here, I had been told by a fellow American staying in Rwanda that everything was very expensive in Kigali. But I find it quite the opposite. I go to the supermarket and buy tons of vegetables and rice and yogurt and eggs and end up spending about 1/3 or even 1/4 of what it would cost me at a store in the US. And there's a good chance most of the stuff I'm buying is organic and free-range and all those other good labels that end up spiking your costs at the store. Eating out at local restaurants is also very cheap--fast-food prices but home-cooked meal quality--getting a meal of rice and vegetables and potatoes (and meat if you eat it) and fruit and a soda might cost about $4. Going to a more "Western"-like restaurant, or Chinese or Indian or what-have-you, might cost more--but still pretty typical for the US, probably leaving having spent around $10-12 per person.

My favorite indulgence here is African Tea. It's like heaven, and can spruce up any day, make you feel cozy or energized or whatever it is you're needing. It's black tea boiled together with milk and ginger, and then topped off with a little sugar. Best. Thing. Ever. Mmm mmm.

Newspaper article about my trip

Click the link to see the article I wrote for the Crimson White, the campus newspaper at the University of Alabama: http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/07/15/healing-nation-says-never-again-to-genocide/

So this is an adventure…

Last Tuesday I rode for 5 hours in the back of a truck with Jean-Baptiste, an FHI program coordinator whom I barely know, and Gaspar, a driver I’d just met, through endless hills and winding roads that I swear to you never straightened out for more than a couple hundred feet. Tea plantations covered the earth as it rose up and fell back down into valleys of rice fields all around us. I saw countless banana trees and quite a few monkeys of some sort just hanging out on the side of the road as we passed through Nyungwe National Park. I was going somewhere I’d never been before. I had no idea what to expect at all. And the work I had to do there was pretty much just to talk to people working with the FHI projects. I felt like I had no control whatsoever, no expectations at all, and all I could do was just go. Be. Trust. It was just me. And it was pretty exciting.

We arrived at our destination in the dark, but I could see the lights from the Congolese border about a thousand yards from the balcony of my hotel room. I bathed with a bucket in the bath tub because the plumbing was broken and I ordered the “African Dish without Meat” from the menu, which was potatoes and plantains and beans and spinach and rice…and pretty good.

The next morning I went to the FHI-Rusizi site office and met the coordinators and leaders who make these programs happen. I attended meetings of the youth and low-income women community group representatives. All week I spoke with people working in various roles with FHI’s ROADS program projects and tried to gather a greater understanding of exactly how they all work together to make this all happen and how this model of community programming works.

These individuals and their group members do peer education and community theater programs to teach their communities about HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, family planning, reproductive health, and voluntary counseling and testing; they do trainings in starting kitchen gardens to improve their nutritional intakes; they participate in income-generating activities so that women who had been sex workers can find other sources of income; and even work directly with current sex workers and the wives of truckers (who tend to be regular customers of sex workers, and thus high-risk to carry HIV and other STIs) to at least educate them about how to stay healthy. FHI provides assistance and funding for these programs, but mostly they focus on building up the capacity of these people in the communities so that the progress they make is sustainable and effective for these individuals and their unique situations. Development funding like FHI’s is tricky and can vanish in a minute, and so, as the country director told me, they just do as much as they possibly can today, give it their all, and hope that tomorrow they’ll be back. But if they’re not, then they can rest with the fact that they did the absolute most they could do yesterday and the day before and that they left these communities with something really worthwhile.

In the mornings as I rode to the office, I watched the fishermen going out in their boats to get their daily catch. And in the evenings, I watched the women walking down the road carrying loads of isambaza (tiny fish) on flat platters atop their heads as Lake Kivu glistened beside them in the warmth of glorious orange sun setting over Congo. And by Saturday I made the 5-hour journey back to the city, and back to the (somewhat) straighter roads.