Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, addressed women’s empowerment and wrote daily posts for the ONE Blog, during her March 2007 travels through India. This week, she posts her final entries from the trip.

Friday, April 13

In Kamatipura, I entered a crumbling building declared by the city as unsafe. Inside, I was immediately engulfed in darkness of dank corridors devoid of windows. An empty room on the left was filled with garbage. Trash was strewn everywhere on the steps and was collected in piles at the ends of hallways. An aging man was selling small items out of his room, a tiny space in which he has lived for more than 25 years. He has a reputation for being kind and keeping condoms to sell for pennies to sex workers and their clients. They call him “Uncle.” Upstairs, in room with 2 rows of 3 beds crammed lengthwise, sat prostituted women who live, cook, eat, hang their wash, sleep, raise children, and have sex with strange men for tiny sums in that very room. I nestled down on the floor near where meager belongings are stored under their beds. I looked at their cooking supplies; a kerosene stove, a few tin pots and pans, a few plates. I made myself cozy in between my sisters. Babies were passed around. Little children were caressed, smiled at, encouraged. One of the babies was 3rd generation; her mother and grandmother are there in the brothel together. How bizarre is that?

The traveling brothel doctor (TBD) was there, as was a PSI counselor; the topic was the female condom with an emphasis on peer education. I was there simply to be with them, to witness their lives. “What do you want me to know?” I asked the group. “My life is hell,” the woman on my left said. “What else is there to say?”

Her statement reminded me of the time in Madagascar when I asked sex workers how they ended up in this condition, and a woman waved her hand dismissively. “Same old story,” she replied, meaning poverty, husband abandoning her, children to feed, no education. And it’s true, the stories around the world are the same, each tracing to its root cause the lack of equality for girls and women, and all the terrifying, repressive consequences that ensue.