Ashley Judd’s Journal from India

Ashley Judd’s Journal from India, Day 9

Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and 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 21, 2007

Nothing I’ve done or seen could have prepared me for what happened next. I emerged from the car to face a tiny, dark tunnel that began between two shanties which were actually exposed entirely at the front. The tunnel, about 18″ wide and less than 6′ tall, was entirely black – no light at all. The uneven cement was wet from an unseen water source. I hunched down, let my eyes adjust, and held that hand of 16 year old, Nasreen, who escorted me into the reality of this “housing” compound that accommodates 10,000 people. It twisted and turned unexpectedly, I never got my bearings. Noise was all around, the sounds of people living…conversations, a t.v. (there is more jerry rigged electric around here, it’s amazing none of it goes on fire), and children squealing. The children, who had been at the car when I arrived, would crazily appear in cracks along our way that were so small I hadn’t thought they were passageways. Yet, from floor to ceiling the slim, dark space would impossibly fill with faces.

Eventually, Nasreen and I arrived at a wooden ladder, which we climbed up into the 2 tiny rooms she shares with her HIV+ mother, Kausar, and her brother. Incredibly, this is a double decker affair, one stacked on top of the other. I was pretty much speechless…there are no words. One truly has to see it to grasp what I am vaguely intimating.

When Kausar found out she was HIV+ in the 1999, the doctor said, “There are drugs, you cannot afford, them, and you’ll be dead in 5 minutes anyway.” Indignant, she ripped her test result paper in half and slapped him across the face. He pressed charges. In court, she spoke on her own behalf. The judge saw things her way, and demanded the doctor pay her a small fee in damages. Hence, a spit fire of an HIV activist was born. Kausur works for PSI and escorts other HIV+ patients as they go to doctors, receive care, etc. She has a fierce innate sense of justice.

During hard times, Nasreen scrounged for her family to stay alive. She begged. She worked. Eventually, she herself went so hungry, a teacher finally reached out to her, learned her story, and personally gave her money for food. Nasreen wants to be a doctor. Although quiet and respectful, she is a teen, and became a little bored with her mother’s story telling. The impatient sighs gave her away. (It was really cute.)

Remarkably, when I asked Kausar if she has discussed sex education with Nasreen, the answer was no. I boldly initiated the dialogue right then and there and challenged Kausar: You know she’s going to learn somewhere. Do you prefer she learn from her friends or you? Can you control or influence what her friends say, if what they tell her is even accurate? Do you want to shape her values and decision making? Do you know if men approach her? Nasreen, are boys flirting with you? (Yes.) Would you rather learn from your Mummy? Do you want to ask her first, or would you feel better if she brought it up? (The latter.)

It was a good visit. Kausar is a pistol. She has so very, very little and gives entirely of herself. She has a very charismatic faith in God and credits God for her strength. Where we sat, surrounded by corrugated tin walls covered with newspaper for a spiffed up look (flour and water is the paste that holds it together, a chore of Nasreen’s), which is also where they sleep, live, everything. The other room, even tinier, is where they use hauled in water (up that ladder??) for bathing, and they have a tiny kerosene lamp for cooking. We went over their diet; it is very modest (bread and chai for breakfast, vegetables the rest of day, very little protein), but they get by and they don’t go too hungry much of the time.

I came to India for Nasreen.

Ashley Judd’s Journal from India, Day 8

Actor and humanitarian Ashley Judd, board member of Population Services International (PSI) and 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.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Today was fantastic. Diane from PSI and I drove over to Cotton Green, a fascinating staging area for truckers near the Mumbai dock.

The dock is such that truckers arrive in this area to wait for days while goods arrive and are loaded. It is actually is a sort of village for thousands of men; they line their colorful, hand painted trucks up according to state of origin, men of similar backgrounds making a family of choice for the time they are in Cotton Green. They sleep in their trucks, and they have a tiny little kerosene flame for cooking. The truck is their pride and joy, as it should be! They live in them, earn their living via them, and they are fabulously decorated in ways that reflect the fact that their entire lives depend on them.

These men are on the road for months at a time, crisscrossing the giant subcontinent that is India on its thousands and thousands of miles of national highway system. Away from their wives, they go to commercial sex workers often, and they are at high risk for STIs and HIV, which of course they then take home to their wives. Rural, married women are the highest new infection group in India.

Our outreach here has been in place since 1998 and was an absolute joy to see. Yellow coat wearing counselors were stationed intermittently along lines of trucks that stretched as far as the eye could see. One group was staging a very dramatic and loud play, punctuated by an attention grabbing drum beat, the plot of which was safe sex. Another group offered a ball toss game (I missed both my tries). The results lead, win or lose, to dialogues about sex: what is safe sex, what kinds of women might have HIV (any and all! Looking healthy doesn’t mean for sure she's not! Use protection with each partner!), how does one reduce risk, where are products and services available, the importance and confidentiality of HIV testing. The counselors, as always, were clear, engaging, sensitive, and handled the tone of their target groups perfectly.

When I began this work years ago, I was sick and shattered by brothels alone. Truckers in India are themselves exploited at every turn, much like the CSWs. I learned today more about the difficulties of their lives. Some Indians believe truckers are responsible for HIV and ostracize them. One man with whom I spoke longs to marry, but each time a woman's family discovers his occupation, they withdraw her availability to marry him. They are not paid a living wage, either. Poverty reduction solutions are what each of these groups, without exception, need.

Ashley Judd’s Journal from India, Day 7

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.

Monday, March 19, 2007

A lovely young man showed me a powerpoint presentation about our micro finance and credit programs. It was utterly thrilling. CSWs (Commericial Sex Workers) are in unbreakable cycles of vicious debt: to the people who own them, the madams who run the brothels, and the money lenders who do the classic scam of high interest rates when a woman has an emergency and cannot say no. The deal is so stacked against them, and they suffer, their children suffer, the families back home whom they are supporting suffer.

Our program seeks to remedy that, emphatically interrupting the cycle for them, yet, it is run by them. The women are counseled about the importance of savings and encouraged to set goals: their children’s education, for example. Sangini, which means “friend,” creates a photo I.D. for each CSW. Identification is a huge barrier to banking, as they require papers, such as a birth certificate. These women simply do not have such since they were trafficked, tricked, or simply so rural and poor, or all of the above. Each day, someone from Sangini will come to each brothel to pick up deposits, even if it is only 1 rupee. The member may withdraw her money at any time, in any amount, without penalty; while deposited, it earns a healthy, fair interest. It’s simply the neatest operation. They have outfoxed the cheaters and owners at every move with targeted fiscal intervention that puts what the CSW earns under her own control for the first time!!!

Economic empowerment is an essential piece in the complex puzzle of disentangling women from exploitation; I love all our programs in each of the ten countries I have personally visited, but this one I believe is truly special. It’s the first of its type worldwide and has awesome potential to explode to the benefit of once hopelessly trapped women everywhere. Rock on, Sangini!!!

***

Next I visited with four members of Sanghamitra (our peer educators) – Shehnaz, Akatai, Indira, and Simla; each of whom explained how different their lives are by virtue of sharing their experience, strength, and hope with other CSWs They detailed what it’s been like to find their voices, gain a measure of self esteem, self worth, self respect, and some self love. They were a very typical sampling of CSWs: one was sold into a brothel from her village by an uncle for 3,000 rupees (about $900US); one came knowingly out of starvation and the need to care for her two young children – one of whom had polio; one was trafficked from Nepal; and the other was brought to Mumbai by a friend to do “housework.” They each had had husbands at some point; one died, one disappeared, and the other two were alcoholics. Between them, these four older, beautiful, wounded but slowly healing women had 100 years of brothels between them; now, they have some peace of mind and some choices. It was quietly thrilling to hear them share some light as the finish to their stories of harrowing darkness.

In addition to running the center, which I expect will be a very uplifting visit this week, their job is to reach out as peer educators to other CSWs in the brothels to encourage them to join this community based organization, to describe its benefits and programs, and to talk, always to talk, about how to protect their reproductive health, avert unintended pregnancy, and stay safe. One of the women actually gets to live in the center; I wish they all did.

-Ashley

Ashley Judd’s Journal From India, Day 6

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.

***

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.

***

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

Ashley Judd’s Journal From India, Day 5

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’s Journal from India, Day 4

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’s Journal from India, Day 3

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.