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By Root 1040 0

to name our feelings, out them, and release them before they have a chance to become toxic to our bodies and our souls. So many aid workers (and others in helping professions, such as nurses) anesthetize themselves at the end of the day with alcohol, cigarettes, food, or even drugs to numb the effects of what they’ve witnessed. Too often, gifted, compassionate people burn out. Seane and I encouraged the humanitarian and aid staff to join us to talk honestly about what we had been seeing and feeling, even if those thoughts were not exactly politically correct. In our circle, it is okay to admit, “The stench of that person made me want to gag and run away,” or, “I wanted to smash that pimp’s head in with a brick.” We would listen without judgment in a room filled with candles and friends. We considered how we could overcome the anger, revulsion, guilt, and fear that we weren’t doing enough and carry on with greater love.

Our staff members were so used to stuffing down their emotions that this process was alien, even frightening to some of them. Some later confessed they thought it was compulsory, because I was on PSI’s board of directors, and I felt bad about that. For myself, I have made it mandatory. Feelings are not facts, and in order to endure in this work, not burn out or give up or just stay home on the farm, I need to express my feelings, even the crazy ones. I need the support of others as I do so, to know I am not alone in my internal struggles. And I certainly need spiritual tools to go the distance and stay present in the work, when it is so tempting and easy to become hopeless, apathetic, cynical. Because if I am one with every being on earth, then I must keep growing in order to arrive at the place of not just intellectualizing, but feeling my shared humanity with both the prostitutes and the pimps, the abused and the abusers, and locate within my own heart compassion for both, equally and unconditionally.

Easier said than done.

I knew that my compassion was going to be tested at the next big event on my schedule: an afternoon with hundreds of truck drivers who exploit men, women, and children to satisfy their alleged sexual “needs” during the long separations from their families. As I said my evening prayers, I wondered how my tools were going to see me through that one.

Chapter 18

ADVENTURES IN BOLLYWOOD

Geeta (who died in the streets shortly after this photo was taken) and Sushmita Sen.

Leadership is taking responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.

—MARSHALL GANZ

hey don’t call me the Vanna White of condoms for nothing. To teach correct and consistent condom use during these field trips, I travel with a life-size wooden replica of a penis in my shoulder bag. At appropriate times, I whisk it out to demonstrate how to unroll and apply a condom, often to the mortification and amusement of the women, teens at drop-in centers, HIV-positive couples, and others who are not accustomed to openly discussing sexual behavior. I have performed the ritual for thousands of people over the years, but never, until India, all at one time.

This day, I stood on a small wooden platform beneath a colorful tent while five or six thousand Indian truck drivers crowded around for some good ole behavior change communication. They were piling on top of their trucks and hanging off light poles to get a glimpse—not of me, but of my partner in this demonstration, Akshay Kumar, one of Bollywood’s biggest action heroes, the Indian equivalent of Will Smith or Bruce Willis, but with a fan base of a billion people. Kate Roberts had done a sensational job of reaching out to India’s major film stars to help us in our awareness and prevention campaign. And now I passed my wooden dildo to this gracious and charismatic actor, who held it in one hand while he translated my instructions into Hindi through a megaphone held in the other. The truckers watched, grinning and slack-jawed, while I tore open a condom packet and did my thing: “And make sure you roll it all the way to the base