Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Except for feeling lethargic today, I have felt so very well and balanced. The positive self talk, boy, I can’t say enough about it. Here in India, “I can stay present” has been a key one, as the mind has a mind of its own. Yesterday I was catching my mind fleeing toward this giant slum I visited this week. It is shockingly densely populated, a million suffering souls. We had a bit of a melee yesterday with the press at one of our activities; it was quite out of hand – and I was allowing myself to become really scared about what it would be like in the slum if the press found out I was there.

Yesterday I had a lovely time visiting our Saadhan Call In Line program. It is a free, anonymous, and confidential service available to all Indians, a number they may call with any and all questions about their reproductive health, which will be answered by trained, non-judgmental staff that also have at their fingertips an entire data base of medically accurate information. The shame surrounding sex education is a worldwide phenomenon, and people can be so woefully uninformed, to their own and others’ severe detriment and even death. The Saadhan line and its caring workers help individuals make informed decisions, increase risk perception, and choose safe behaviors. It’s a fabulous program. I sat in the little call room and did interviews. I was very proud to be there. They’ve taken 66,000 calls to date.

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I also visited the Mumbai home of the Great Soul, Gandhi. I read every word, studied every picture, and spent quiet time in front of the plain palette where he slept. I imagined his hand on his walking staff, and was amazed at the crude mug from which he drank. It was wonderful beyond description. Of his many, many inspired teachings, perhaps I love best that he said, “I am a Jew! I am a Christian! I am a Hindu! I am a Muslim!” I have no timidity whatsoever in declaring I am a devout follower of his teachings and believe without reservation that nonviolence is the only way toward peace.

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Seane Corn, profound yoga teacher dedicated to service, arrives tonight! She taught me how to make my physical practice, and by extension my life, a prayer. One day we will practice yoga with sex workers, an idea for which Seane feels deep tenderness. Helping them to bring something healing to their own bodies, an antidote to the abuse heaped on them for years, is her dream.

In the meantime, it is a quiet day. It seems some jet lag has hit; everyone else says their days 3 and 4 were really rough. Oh well, it’s a Sunday. A nap, self care is all that is on the docket. I feel some loneliness; I wanted to go visit my friends in Faulkland Road, but Sundays are hard work for sex workers. They don’t have time to hang out with me. I guess I’ll check basketball scores (how glad am I that I didn’t organize this trip around the SEC tournament?), and reflect on how totally weird it was to be pinned in a porn theatre lobby, trapped on one side by men watching exploitation films, a throng and press on the other?

I hope soon to have the cord required to send snap shots. I have some doozies. My mind is full of one: A tall, narrow, 3-faced building, 10 stories high, each little walkway, window, cracked opening, and stairwell, crammed full of the bodies, minds, and souls of sex workers. They were waving at me. I loved them right back. Of that, I have only a memory; I hadn’t asked each and every single one if I could take a picture. I always ask. They have so much shame; it’s abusive not to ask.

Busy week ahead; I hope you’ll join me.

Love,

Ashley

Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

A few background details:

-20% or fewer of commercial sex workers (CSW) are literate. Grade 4 is the average amount of schooling.

-The average CSW has 2 children; madams like them to have children, which keep them in the poverty cycle. Sex work is not illegal in a ‘home,’ hence within brothels it is legal. Soliciting, however, on the street is illegal. Thus is created a highly ambiguous and ambivalent environment in which paid sex flourishes, with no protections whatsoever for girls and women who are bought and sold.

As Mumbai continues to explode in numbers, the strain on services, such as running water and electricity, increases; soon, the electricity in the areas I visited today will be on a few hours a day basis. If a CSW were to complain to the police about anything, it is highly likely she would be harassed and probably exploited sexually. Madams and pimps pay for police protection. A girl 18 years of age is considered underage and is illegal, however, age verification is impossible and a madam will simply train the girl to say she’s 19. Another common ruse is, “She has 2 children!,” which unfortunately, is true: she is child, a mother, and a sex worker. Awareness of STIs and HIV in these areas is high and condom availability and use is also fairly high, thanks in large part to risk perception, behavior change, communication outreach, and subsidizing by PSI, which have raised it from negligible levels in 1990 to over 70%.

How PSI/India has been making a difference since 1990 in Mumbai brothels:

In this high risk area, our primary goal is to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS in sex workers and their clients. We have had a mandate to do this since 1990. I saw a fraction of our efforts today:

1. Our interpersonal communicators each have 300 women they personally visit. They make 2 rounds daily of assigned brothel buildings, 5 days a week, working one-on-one and in groups. They wear yellow coats so as to be easily recognized and over time gain trust and build rapport. They track what each woman has received by way of sex education: what was said, what did she learn, did she express willingness to use products (male and female condoms, for example)? In this way, we can help account for the health of each CSW, infections that need treatment, and stay on top of new health interventions as they are needed. The communication style is upbeat, positive, and often involves clever games, activities, and shows.

2. Our peer educators are former CSWs we are able to pay enough to get them out of sex, and who have a special credibility in the brothels. They share personal experience to highlight the importance of healthy sexual behavior.

3. Obviously, we also have a traveling brothel doctor (TBD). She sees the karza and those too ill to get out of bed, as well as the elderly. (That is a special sort of CSW, the elderly. They have gone from karza, to “50-50’s” (meaning they share profits with the madam) to independents (who rent beds for 10 rupees a client) to madams themselves. I am not even going into that here; I met a 60 year old who began before she menstruated, about 11 or 12. Dr. Singh has a special tenderness and compassion for old women in the brothels, watching her with them is extremely moving.)

4. Sanghamitra, the project named providentially for a great Buddhist figure, aims to empower sex workers via engendering healthy behaviors, self esteem, self efficacy, collective bargaining and the sense of their right to use their voice. It also provides products and services, vocational skills, cultural and creative activities.

Ashley Judd, a well-known Hollywood actor and humanitarian, a Board Member of Population Services International (PSI) and a the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Today, I spent time in a very secretive brothel, where cotton cloth covered the entry to each room. These are girls and women who are literally sex slaves, unable to physically leave the building, even to go to the health clinic. They do not see the outdoors for years; their only walking is to the toilet at the end of the hall. They are in the “karza” phase, meaning they have been brought in, tricked by someone they know in their home village (who himself was probably in economically tense circumstances, often needing money for a dowry.) Madams keep contacts from what was once their own home region, and they put the word out when they need 2, 5, 10 new girls. The man, often a family friend, or even a relative, will suggest he has lined up a job in housework, perhaps, in glamorous Bollywood for a child. Instead, she have been purchased by a madam for as little as $100 US, and must now “earn” her back her money, in addition to whatever she spends housing and food. India has a huge number of languages and over 100 dialects. So these trafficked girls come in not speaking Mumbai’s Hindi or Marathi. They are young, rural, unable to communicate, and are terrified. If they do dare to flee, heavies are stationed at obvious places, such as rail and bus stations, to bring them straight back.

All of the above being true, the women I met in this human store house were actually from Nepal, which has seen tens of thousands of its young stolen for Mumbai’s sex trade. Their poverty so bad, their desperation so intense, they would be forced to work here with an impossible number of clients per day. The Nepalese trafficking problem was actually revealed by NGO’s such as ours, as 75% became HIV+, and it was brought to both the Indian and Nepalese governments’ attention by health workers who were testing. Typically, the governments argued about where these victims should be sent (no one wanted them); the only good that came from any of these obscenities is that trafficking has been successfully reduced significantly from that country. An exception being, of course, the women I met today. One of them was the madam, we spoke at length. She lied to me, explaining her status within the room by saying she was the maid and had never been in the trade, that she came from a good family. Her friend-slash-property left the room, unable to stay and listen to the lie. Business is very bad in that brothel. The police raid often, and had, in fact, earlier today, hearing there are minors. They have very, very few clients and go for 2-3 days at a time without eating.

Ashley Judd, a well-known Hollywood actor and humanitarian, a Board Member of Population Services International (PSI) and a the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

The great Dr. Shilpa, who runs our red-light district programs, and I arrived at our offices, which are small yet impeccable. The space is kept with such love and pride. The pin cushion boards detail our service work with darling, effective craft illustrations. The staff, all of whom are local, work with total dedication in extraordinarily challenging environments that would destroy the souls of the less faithful. Today was to be about visiting sex workers who cannot make it to the clinic, both due to how ill they are and because they are held in “karza,” the indentured servitude phase of sex slavery.

Dr. Singh, Deana and I went to Falkland Road brothel district. It is an exceedingly poor area, teeming with crummy buildings and masses eking by. We climbed the narrow, worn stairs of a brothel building and were greeted warmly by 13 commercial sex workers (CSWs) and their children, and I was made very welcomed into their bleak rooms. We sat huddled on the floor, while Dr. Singh used an anatomical form of the female reproductive system to provide an essential health lesson. I watched keenly, studying the CSWs’ faces as many of them for the first time, after years of being paid a dollar or less for sex, learned how their bodies work from a medical point of view. The form has a little hatch door on the abdomen which open to a view of the uterus, etc. They were attentive and asked questions, many of which revealed their ignorance.

The room itself was one of many. It was long and narrow, the 2 long walls lined with built in beds, head to toe, head to toe, 4 feet off the ground. A woman lives in each bed, as well as on the floor space below each bed. So at least 8 people, not even counting their children, live in each. They have strings laced tautly around the room to provide for hanging space, and they toss their few possessions on the strings, which also double as a way for make shift curtains of cut cotton to create drapes in between each bed as the clients stream in and out. The sex work is carried on regardless of whom else is in the room; other CSWs with their clients, children, the doctor when she is visiting. There is a common spigot on each floor, but the water is available from 4-6 a.m. only. The women fill pails during this time, in between clients. There is a squat toilet hole on each floor. They cook in their bed area with a tiny kerosene flame, which they refill from a government subsidized shop. There is electricity and each room has a ceiling fan. The window drew in air freely, as well as allowing the ringing cacophony of the streets to pour in.

As I write this, it sounds so utterly horrible, and yet while I was there, it felt normal. For my sisters there it is, and so it was for me. We visited at length and shared stories, hugs, and they reflected to me the things they learned from the doctor’s talk. The clear need for immediate empowerment of their reproductive health is urgent.

The suffering of one is the shame of us all.

Ashley Judd, a well-known Hollywood actor and humanitarian, a Board Member of Population Services International (PSI) and a the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, will be writing posts for the ONE Blog during her March 2007 travels through India. During the trip, Ashley will address women’s issues, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

As I arrived into Mumbai, I saw a family near the runway where we landed with pails pulling water out of a filthy ditch, in which the children were also playing. The drive to the hotel hummed with the experience of Mumbai, the largest city in the world, the monochromatic shanty roofs of a million person slum, families living on sidewalks, beggars, many of whom themselves have maimed their children in a desperate attempt to extract money from tourists, hundreds of thousands of matching little taxis, all manner of rickshaws, flowing somewhat miraculously in multiple directions at once, accompanied by a giant symphony of horn honking. They do love to honk their horns in ole Mumbai.

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Prostitution for women is a complex issue that is traced to one fundamental thing: the lack of equality for girls and women, historically and currently. The ongoing sexual objectification of our gender leads to ongoing inequities in education, economic, property, and legal disempowerment, which in turn, of course, keeps women and their children powerlessly stuck in the violence of poverty. For me, the most fundamental expression of this poverty is a woman’s inability to negotiate, much less control, her own sexuality and fertility.

To that end, I work with PSI/India to help reach the most poor and exploited for an immediate health intervention at the most basic level. In addition to helping India curb its HIV emergency, for me, preventing unintended pregnancy is a deeply moral issue of profound implications and urgency. No child should already be living brothels, much less born into them. No child should be food insecure at any time, much less know no other way of life. While we cannot change the living status of these vast numbers of poor overnight (80% of India’s 1 billion live in poverty) we can help women not have more babies that bind them further to destitution, to powerlessness, to pimps and madams. The numbers are huge, so huge. The women are broken, the children doomed.

The overall solution to what I believe is gender apartheid must be balanced and broad; it requires a spiritual revolution that allows girls equal access from early age to education, microfinancing, a redefining of “women’s work,” and universal human rights.

Tomorrow, I am going to the notorious brothel district in the world’s most populous city, Mumbai, where girls and women have absolutely none of the above.

-Ashley Judd”

(Photo credit: Jenny Mayfield)

Ashley Judd, a well-known Hollywood actor and humanitarian, is a Board Member of Population Services International (PSI) and is the Global Ambassador for YouthAIDS, an education and prevention initiative of PSI, which uses media, pop culture, music, theatre and sport to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people. Ashley Judd will visit India during March 2007. On her visit to India, Ashley Judd will address women’s issues, which are close to her heart, and have the opportunity to discover how families can be empowered to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancies.

Ashley will be writing posts for the ONE Blog throughout her trip. Below is her first:

To even type “India” and “travel day” for me is an exquisite thrill. As a kid I yearned with such poignancy to see the world! I imagined sophisticated travels, eccentric adventures, and anthropological scrutiny of native populations.

And now, here I am embarking on a remarkable journey to my 10th developing country with YouthAid/Population Services International, rather than focusing on Aruvedic spas and colorful Hindu temples I am zeroed in on the largest slum in Asia and the largest brothel district in India, and what I do in these non tourist destinations (unless you’re a sex tourist, a category of person we shall address later), is reach out to poor people with upbeat, effective behavior change messages focused on medically accurate sex education, HIV/AIDS and STD prevention, and family planning.

A quick stat to demonstrate why: 24 million babies are born in India every single year. Yes, the equivalent population of Australia is born annually. 80% of India’s population lives in poverty and the majority of babies are born into devastating hardship.

Remember, the great Mahatma Gandhi was very clear: Poverty is the worst form of violence. And, the number of HIV+ in India is greater than the population of the U.K. The need for measurable, sustainable, immediate intervention is utterly critical. We will have a special focus on girls and women’s empowerment, and engaging men who go to sex workers about their attitudes towards women.

I am often asked why in the world I do this social justice work in squalid places filled with filth and despair, and I am, by the grace of God, slowly learning that piece of my own story. I have always had an absolutely insane insensitivity to sexual exploitation of any kind—overt, covert, institutionalized, spontaneous on the street, whatever. I simply cannot tolerate it. I know now that I was abused myself, and of course, it all makes so much more sense. I have no need to dissemble what happened here; for one, I have healed, and I have done that work in the appropriate safe places with the appropriate people. The only reason I mention it is that you’ll come across the word “recovery” now and then as I write. I could not journal without making reference to it. It has saved my life. It has changed my life. Today, I have recovery, and with it comes healthy boundaries, loving detachment, and the ability to serve for the sake of serving, not because I am unconsciously trying to wrestle my own unresolved griefs. We are all one, and I am unbelievably moved to live this out, time and again. We are one.

If you choose to keep reading these diaries, you’ll hear about our goals as an ngo (non governmental organization) and our awesome programs in India. They won’t all be so terribly intimate (I might be lying right now!). My personal goal is to feel, just once, compassion, tenderness, and dare I say love, for a perpetrator. To see someone who exploits other human beings and to understand completely that the behavior is not the soul. To remember that abused people abuse, that the definition of power with which they live is as arid and abusive as the system in which they confine women. To truly love just one madame or pimp—-even if only for a breath, that is my goal. This is my prayer.

Ashley

(Photo credit: Jenny Mayfield)