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My African Adventure - Part 6

Submitted by editor_en on Wed, 04/09/2008 - 10:13.

Day 6, April 6TH, 2008

Getting tired now! Late nights and early starts to every day, I was really dragging this morning. But I had to be on form – I had a meeting at the American Embassy, so I heaved myself out of bed, showered (good to know!), and put on my only dress in the bag: yes, it needed to be ironed, but my commitment didn’t quite stretch that far!

Drove out to the Embassy. It was 8am and already 29 degrees. I watched the residents of Dar moving about their business, very much wide awake, the kids on their bikes, late getting to school, and the women walking around with huge baskets of banana’s on their heads. One thing I noticed in both Ethiopia, and here in Dar, is that you see very few people who wear glasses. So either the eyesight of the average Ethiopian and Tanzanian is much better than the rest of the world… or an awful lot of them are walking around half blind, without the opportunity (or the money) to get their eyes tested and buy glasses. I have a feeling that that’s very very low on their list of priorities.

As with most places around Dar, the US Embassy compound was directly opposite a slum. But when you get through security, and walk through the beautifully manicured grounds, you could really be anywhere in the world. The birds were singing, the grass was green… and there was a framed picture of George W. Bush smiling at me as I checked in at reception.

Outside, the blue sky had disappeared, and I saw the grey clouds build up ominously. Today I was really going to learn what it was like experiencing the rainy season!

Once my meetings were over, I picked up Sara and Bill back at the hotel, to go to our next meeting, which was at T-MARC. T-MARC is a Tanzanian NGO, run by a very very good friend of mine, Hally Mahler. Hally has worked with me on Staying Alive for a good few years now, but she moved out to Dar a couple of years ago… and I miss her! She is absolutely the inspiration for me to write this blog, as Hally’s been writing her (very brilliant and very funny) blog since she moved out here to Dar. I love the fact that through her blog, I know everything that’s going on in her life, even if we don’t speak often.

Hally is working on several projects (all based around HIV-prevention), and she had arranged for a young girl called Elisa to meet with us. Elisa used to be a sex-worker here in Dar, and a documentary had been made about her life. We watched the programme: I wish you could too. I’ve never sat in a meeting and wanted to sob my heart out more.

Elisa’s story starts with her father – she blames him for everything, for the way her life has turned out. She doesn’t blame the woman who sold her (for just under $10) to be a house-girl and work, effectively, as a slave; she doesn’t blame the man who raped her in this house; or the police, who would only take a statement from her if she gave them 20,000 shillings (about $20, but for Elisa, who had no money at all, she might as well have been asked for $20,000 given that she had no money to pay the ‘fee’); or the woman of the house, who called the police when she heard about the rape, and got Elisa arrested; or the man (whoever that was) who infected her with HIV. No. As far as Elisa was concerned, the blame lay firmly at the feet of her father, for throwing her mother out of the house when he found out that she was pregnant with Elisa. Elisa had absolutely no opportunity in this life – from the time she was a foetus, there was no one to care for and about her.

When Elisa finally got out of jail (for being raped… go figure!), she worked as a sex worker in ‘Hyena Square’. Hyena Square is about the size of a football pitch, and is somewhere hidden in the depths of Dar. There is absolutely NOTHING good about Hyena Square. The people there are (mainly) young men and women, who have drifted there with no other hope in the world. The men spend their time sleeping with the women, and fighting with the other men. The women spend their time desperately trying to earn enough money to feed themselves by selling their bodies to the men. Hyena Square is desperate, Hyena Square is what I would imagine Hell to be. And this is where Elisa found herself. Her and a few other girls banded together to protect and look out for each other. But one by one, like some bad movie – except this is real life – Elisa’s friends died: one from a failed abortion, one from HIV, one from a drugs overdose (a lot of people are hooked on heroin here). And so her one tiny light of hope, her friends, had disappeared from her life… and I found this just the saddest part of her story, because her friends were truly the only positive part of her life… and probably because that was the only part of her life – having friends – that I could relate to.

Without wanting to patronise Elisa at all, it has to be said that she is one tough cookie. She found someone who taught her kick-boxing so that she could protect herself, and met up with a charity (the only one) working in Hyena Square trying to help girls get out of this perpetual cycle of drugs and sex. Nothing happened instantly, there was no fairy godmother here to wave her wand over Elisa’s head, but Elisa, with the help of this charity, managed to get herself out of Hyena Square. She was helped with a room to stay in and given food and clothes (the fundamental basics before you can change your life), and taught some skills so she could earn money other than by selling her body.

Elisa was tested for HIV, and found out that she was HIV+ve. No surprise there really, how could she hope for anything less, given her history? But Elisa was determined to change her life: today, she’s on treatment, she plays for a women’s football team (they’re climbing their way up from the 4th to the 2nd division), and she’s changing her life, step by step.

Elisa now works for the documentary company that filmed her story: she’s paid by them to talk about her story to other young people – young girls who haven’t left their villages and think that life in the big city of Dar will be so easy, when in reality they’re just likely to be trafficked and end up as sex workers; and to girls who are already living their lives as sex workers, trying to show them that there is a way out. Elisa’s story is so so bleak, and yet she was sitting next to us, telling us that what she wants most in this world is to have the opportunity to tell her story, and to have people be proud of what she is doing. I was proud to have the opportunity to meet Elisa and hear her story first-hand.

We’ve asked Elisa if she’d put in a proposal to the Staying Alive Foundation, to see if we can give her project (she’s now set up as a registered charity) some money to help tell her story to even more people across Dar and Tanzania. As with Philip, who I wrote about yesterday, Elisa is another example of finding inspirational shining lights, who are able to influence others, and through others, change other people’s lives. Bit by bit, little by little, just one person by one person at a time.

Elisa’s story will stay with me for a long, long time.

Later that day, Hally took us to an event that T-MARC was organising, not so far from Hyena Square, in a small community square. T-MARC runs a campaign which is all about encouraging faithfulness within marriages and couples. A young girl who is HIV-ve before she gets married, is at huge risk when she does get married, as she absolutely can’t insist on using condoms with her husband. And the husband is at just as much risk, as it’s common for married girls and women to have transactional sex (sex for money, food, gifts, clothes etc) with someone other than their husband. So we went to see a bell-ringing ceremony (the bell-ringing signifies faithfulness), and young people accept the challenge to talk about faithfulness within their communities.

There was a large crowd gathered underneath a few tents, and a stage and sound-system put up… the music was blaring, the people on stage were bouncing around with enough energy to power the whole region, and everyone was loving it! Games were played, songs sung, and speeches (zzzzz) were made. The square we were sitting in was already flooded from the rains, and I looked around at the kids who had gathered excitedly to watch the event… and noticed that barely any of them had shoes on their feet. Hally told us that even though some of them look as if they’re about 4 or 5 years old, the malnutrition is so bad, that they’re probably much nearer to 8, 9 or 10 years.

And then the rain came. I don’t want to be boring (or at least, to be typically English, always talking about the weather)… but let me just say that when it rains here in the rainy season, the heavens open, the taps are opened, and the water just pours, pours, pours down. There is no point in using an umbrella, there’s very little point in seeking shelter… those rains will get you. Even the main roads through Dar are flooded – and the traffic just collapses, and a journey that would normally take 10 minutes, will now take at least an hour.

Despite the rain, after the bell-ringing (to much excitement and cheering from a wet but happy crowd), we went next door to an HIV testing centre. Over a normal month, the testing centre will expect to test about 100 people. But because the bell-ringing event was taking place, and encouraging people to get tested, they’d already tested 30 people in the last 2 hours… and of those, 5 had tested positive. It’s a shocking statistic, but the nurse was happy with the results: it means that 5 more people who’ve been walking around infected (and very possibly infecting others) now know their status, and are able to get on treatment and, hopefully, use protection whenever they have sex.

As night fell, Hally took us to a condom promotion event in one of the bars near where we were. Again, a small stage, lots of loud music and presenters jumping around… this time, with dildo and condom in hand, showing how to put a condom on. They asked the audience if they had any questions… they did: can the condom get stuck in the girl’s vagina (the answer, if you were wondering, is no!); and can you use a condom more than once? (again, the answer is no – use them once, take them off and throw them away). And then they did a demonstration on how to use a female condom – this is where the audience was at its most rapt, as they had a plastic vagina (well, obviously!) on which they showed where and how to put the condom. I’m sorry to say that female condoms just seem to be so much more complicated than male condoms… even when it comes to demonstrating their use! Male condom… unroll it down the dildo… hey presto, you’re done. Female condom, you have to have a plastic replication of the workings inside the vagina… you have to stand in a certain way (that got the men in the bar laughing!)… and, if you’ve never used one, it’s well… noisy! Hally tells me that there’s a new version of the female condom, which promises to be less noisy… well, I shall have to try it out and let you know if that’s true or not!

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