All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [146]
“Are you afraid of catching HIV?” she asked in Spanish. Yes, said Brenda, but she knew to use condoms, she could insist on it. She also knew how to inspect a customer’s genitals for external indications of STIs. Salma picked up a handful of unopened condom strips that were scattered on the bedspread and asked, “How much do you pay for these?” They were given out free at the health clinic, said Brenda. I was more interested in why Brenda had become a prostitute. The answer was all too familiar: She needed the money to feed her son. There was no other work. She had no education or vocational skills. To provide for him, she sold herself ten or a dozen times a day for the equivalent of $2 a client. (This seemed to be a worldwide price point for exploitive sex.) We made our way down the street, knocking on doors and talking to the women. It was a depressing scene, as always, but with my friend by my side it was not so heavy. In fact, Salma was glowing as we drove out of the barrio, leaning through the open window, waving to the women, and shouting, “Adios, hermanas! Goodbye, my sisters!”
Marshall was intrigued and asked her how it went.
“Oh, it was fantastic,” she said. “These women are incredible, so strong.”
“And what did you talk about?”
“Well, I asked one of them, ‘Do your children know what you do?’ ” said Salma. “And she says to me, ‘No, I tell them that I sell underwear.’ I say, ‘Why would you tell them that?’ She says ‘You know, it’s kind of close to the truth … because the panties are close to the cootchie.’ ” Peals of laughter. I could see Papa Jack’s ears turning red as he sat in the front seat, trying to keep his eyes on the crowd and the police escort leading us back to La Terminal.
Passing defunct cars riddled with bullet holes, we pulled up in front of a stark building and entered a large warehouse space where dozens of prostitutes were playing games with U.S. taxpayers’ money. At least that’s the way Republican senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma tried to characterize one of PSI’s most successful education programs in a letter to President Bush in 2005. “The project which has been funding these prostitute parties is up for renewal,” Coburn wrote. “There is something seriously askew at USAID when the agency’s response to a dehumanizing and abusive practice that exploits women and young girls is parties and games.” I wholeheartedly agree that prostitution is dehumanizing and abusive. It is gender violence. That is where our agreement ends and the senator’s grave shortsightedness begins. PSI’s initiatives, which are often funded by USAID, do not always represent the social ideal, which is that someday all girls and women will have sufficient education, empowerment, and opportunity to support themselves with dignity, free from violence. In the meantime, while we work toward that dream, the health needs of exploited populations should be addressed. Otherwise we are complicit in their abuse and misery.
What Coburn—who is a doctor, no less!—specifically objected to is a bingolike game called La Lotería, in which prostituted women are given cards with a grid of symbols that represent concepts about their bodies, HIV prevention, and pictures of venereal infections. Peer educators hold up the pictures one by one, explaining how to recognize the symptoms of AIDS and other infections and how to prevent them. The players check to see if they have a match. The first to cover all nine squares with tokens wins a small prize, such as a T-shirt or a strip of condoms. La Lotería and other approaches like it convey serious, essential information in a lighthearted, understandable, and practical format for the undereducated and illiterate. Life is hard enough, and studies show that instruction in these settings is not effective when it is grim and heavy-handed.