I had an amazing day at my internship today. I went with Belinda, my head supervisor, to Ashaiman, about a 20 minute ride away. We visited the Worldwide International Youth Organization, which consisted of a two-room building with an outdoor toilet and about 3 employees. They are an organization working in partnership with WAAF and we supervise their activities and spending. We spoke for a while about the programs they had been working on for the month, which included peer educator programs in schools, community durburs to teach people about HIV/AIDS and how to avoid pregnancy and STIs, distributing condoms to various at risk communities, and offering testing in some of the largest slums in Accra. We spoke about the challenges of getting people to show up to events concerning HIV/AIDS because of the stigma surrounding it, and how difficult it can be to convince people to use condoms. We looked through a bunch of their materials and I came across a booklet that had terribly explicit pictures of sexually transmitted infections and what they looked like on penises. I don't really know how to explain what those pictures were like, but it was heartbreaking knowing that the people with those infections were likely still having sex and spreading it, and had very little chances of getting the medical care they needed. But if you ever want to scare someone out of having sex for the rest of their life, USE THAT BOOKLET.
After we spoke for a while and had lunch together (yams and plantain chips, very nutritious) we walked to the Solidarity School, where the WIYO has established a HIV/AIDS awareness club. We spoke to the French teacher, who is the primary leader of the club, and he told us about how the program was going. At one point he mentioned that he thought the club was very beneficial to the children because many of them felt uncomfortable talking to their parents about issues dealing with sex and diseases. He then told us that last week a child in Form 4 (4th grade) said to him that she had been having sex and she wanted to stop but didn't know how to. Yikes. When Belinda and I talked about it later, we talked about the possibility that she had been assaulted in the home and had either become so accustomed to it that she didn't know how to stop it, or was now voluntarily having sex. Either way, it really shakes up your perception of the innocence of childhood when you hear about children dealing with those issues. I've noticed here that a lot of children grow up incredibly fast, learning to take care of the house before they're 12, caring for their siblings all the time, and selling on the streets in order to make money before they have graduated from elementary school. It's part of the reason why a lot of Ghanaian women always look older than they actually are. I have endless respect for the women here and the things they go through.
After leaving the school we walked to a slum in Ashaiman to speak with the collection of commercial sex workers who live there. I don't think I could have mentally prepared myself for that. The slum was very similar to others I have been in, but as soon as I saw a woman walking by in full blue eye shadow but bright lipstick and very skimpy clothes, I knew that we were in the realm of sex workers. We walked down a back alleyway and immediately saw a string of "houses" (basically rooms with enough room for a bed and a dresser with a television). The women sat outside of their rooms in full make up and skimpy clothes, hoping to seduce men into their rooms. Inside the rooms there was a television where the women would play pornography for the men, and then have sex. The women were shocked to see an obruni, and started chanting at me in Twi, which I pretended to understand and replied with some of the phrases I have learned. They were overjoyed that I knew even the slightest bit of Twi, and one woman came and congratulated me with a handshake and said she would like me to come there all the time and she would teach me Twi. I was surprised by how upbeat they seemed considering their surroundings and their work, but it's obvious that they are so used to the horror of it that all they can do is try to laugh.
As we finished distributing condoms to the women, a man walked into my back from inside one of the rooms, and I moved so he could leave the room. The entire time we had been standing there chatting, I had been leaning on a curtain with a man and a sex worker having sex on the other side. As he opened up the curtain zipping up his pants, we could see the women pulling up her underwear. I think that was the most shocked I had been all day, and I didn't understand how it had been going on less than 5 feet away from us and we were unaware. It has become such a natural thing in that part of the slum.
We walked to the next block of sex workers and found them in much worse shape than the others. The woman closest to the entry way was about 25 and looked about 50, and was lying on her side with a really pained look on her face. Her child sat next to her. The woman had contracted an infection and was unwilling to go to the hospital because she couldn't afford not to work for a day. Belinda explained that her 3-year-old, who sat outside the room and didn't go to school, was usually in the room or right outside when his mother was having sex. I can't even imagine the ideas he is going to grow up with in his head. Belinda and I talked about how much therapy he would need to go through to understand what his childhood had been like, and that he had very little chance of ever getting that help. The WIYO women distributed the condoms and promised to come back on Monday to take the woman to the hospital because she needed to get tested and get treatment for whatever she had. She agreed reluctantly. A woman a few stalls down came out and began complaining that last night a man that had had sex with her had stolen her television, DVD player, cell phone, and all of her money. She had no way of getting her things back and no way of buying new things. The other women were helping to keep her in the housing for another few nights but she was unsure what to do after that.
The way it works is that each woman pays 20 cedis a day to stay in the room. They charge 3 cedis per man to have sex, and therefore have to have sex with AT LEAST 7 MEN in order to come out with any kind of profit. It used to be that there were two separate rates; one for using a condom (which cost less) and one for not using a condom. They had recently established a set rate implying that women would always use condoms, but Belinda explained that if the women were desperate enough they would accept extra money from men who wanted to have sex without a condom. It made me wonder if any of the women knew who their childrens' fathers were. I asked Belinda if any of the women had been tested for HIV, and she said that surprisingly most of the women tested negative. This is probably a result of the new set rate that includes using condoms, but it's difficult to know what other diseases the women could have contracted.
Wow. I wish I had more to say than that but I haven't really figured it out yet. I wanted to write about it before I forgot all the details though.
After leaving the school we walked to a slum in Ashaiman to speak with the collection of commercial sex workers who live there. I don't think I could have mentally prepared myself for that. The slum was very similar to others I have been in, but as soon as I saw a woman walking by in full blue eye shadow but bright lipstick and very skimpy clothes, I knew that we were in the realm of sex workers. We walked down a back alleyway and immediately saw a string of "houses" (basically rooms with enough room for a bed and a dresser with a television). The women sat outside of their rooms in full make up and skimpy clothes, hoping to seduce men into their rooms. Inside the rooms there was a television where the women would play pornography for the men, and then have sex. The women were shocked to see an obruni, and started chanting at me in Twi, which I pretended to understand and replied with some of the phrases I have learned. They were overjoyed that I knew even the slightest bit of Twi, and one woman came and congratulated me with a handshake and said she would like me to come there all the time and she would teach me Twi. I was surprised by how upbeat they seemed considering their surroundings and their work, but it's obvious that they are so used to the horror of it that all they can do is try to laugh.
As we finished distributing condoms to the women, a man walked into my back from inside one of the rooms, and I moved so he could leave the room. The entire time we had been standing there chatting, I had been leaning on a curtain with a man and a sex worker having sex on the other side. As he opened up the curtain zipping up his pants, we could see the women pulling up her underwear. I think that was the most shocked I had been all day, and I didn't understand how it had been going on less than 5 feet away from us and we were unaware. It has become such a natural thing in that part of the slum.
We walked to the next block of sex workers and found them in much worse shape than the others. The woman closest to the entry way was about 25 and looked about 50, and was lying on her side with a really pained look on her face. Her child sat next to her. The woman had contracted an infection and was unwilling to go to the hospital because she couldn't afford not to work for a day. Belinda explained that her 3-year-old, who sat outside the room and didn't go to school, was usually in the room or right outside when his mother was having sex. I can't even imagine the ideas he is going to grow up with in his head. Belinda and I talked about how much therapy he would need to go through to understand what his childhood had been like, and that he had very little chance of ever getting that help. The WIYO women distributed the condoms and promised to come back on Monday to take the woman to the hospital because she needed to get tested and get treatment for whatever she had. She agreed reluctantly. A woman a few stalls down came out and began complaining that last night a man that had had sex with her had stolen her television, DVD player, cell phone, and all of her money. She had no way of getting her things back and no way of buying new things. The other women were helping to keep her in the housing for another few nights but she was unsure what to do after that.
The way it works is that each woman pays 20 cedis a day to stay in the room. They charge 3 cedis per man to have sex, and therefore have to have sex with AT LEAST 7 MEN in order to come out with any kind of profit. It used to be that there were two separate rates; one for using a condom (which cost less) and one for not using a condom. They had recently established a set rate implying that women would always use condoms, but Belinda explained that if the women were desperate enough they would accept extra money from men who wanted to have sex without a condom. It made me wonder if any of the women knew who their childrens' fathers were. I asked Belinda if any of the women had been tested for HIV, and she said that surprisingly most of the women tested negative. This is probably a result of the new set rate that includes using condoms, but it's difficult to know what other diseases the women could have contracted.
Wow. I wish I had more to say than that but I haven't really figured it out yet. I wanted to write about it before I forgot all the details though.
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