Women

The black dress seemed excessively revealing- because it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulder were fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Vatsalya's clinic in Jaipur dealt exclusively with truck drivers.  Since the 1990s, HIV awareness in India has been on the rise, but it is still a somewhat taboo topic.  A man and woman should remain virgin until their wedding night, when they are bound to love and honor their partner that they have most likely met for the first time this night.  It seems crazy, but so is the American divorce rate.

Long distance truck drivers leave their homes for days at a time to deliver goods across India, leaving their wives and families behind.

"These men have needs," Doctor Rahul explained.

As a result, there is a lot of prostitution near the rest stops.  The men bring home HIV, gonorrhea, and chlamydia to their wives who often feel to ashamed to tell their husband of their ailment or to seek medical help.  Vatsalya's aim is to fulfill the need for treatment and education in this population.

One day at a extension clinic, one of the male nurses invited us to see a female sex worker.  As we walked out toward the main road, he explained to me:

Female sex worker has four qualities
1: She has other job.  She shines the shoes or sells the things in her area of prostitution.
2: Her husband he travels.
3: She is very wealthy so she can pay the men for sex.
4: She likes the sex.

Wait.  I'm sorry I misunderstood.  You mean to say that her husband left her and that she is so impoverished the only thing left she has to sell is her body, correct?

No.  Female sex worker is very wealthy.  Unless she pays the men they do not wish to cheat on the wife.

I really hope that he was kidding.  I also know that he was completely serious in telling me this.

We found the women sitting on the side of the road in front of their shoe shining stations.  Some were probably female sex workers.  Maybe others weren't.  The nurse said that a man would approach and signal to them.  If they responded to the signal, they were a sex worker and they would work out their deal.  I decided that I needed to go to Ajmer to see the project dealing with female sex workers.  I needed a more complete picture of the problems.

Ajmer.

I woke up early to get there as soon as possible, in hopes of starting work that day.  I arrived and the coordinator was away for a meeting.  Tomorrow you will start.  So I spent the day exploring.

The next day I got up, refreshed, eager to start.  I met the coordinator when he came in the night before and we had arranged for me to shadow some of the educators to female sex worker hot spots.  Again it did not work out to go.  I made the decision to leave that day for Pushkar and start traveling.

It was interesting to have that little glimpse of the project in Ajmer.  Unlike the Jaipur project, it was solely an awareness and condom use program.  Women were not tested for sexually transmitted infections, although they were often taken to sites where they could be tested.  Women who were already HIV positive did not fall into the targeted patient population.  These women were taken care of by other organizations or by the government run HIV clinics.

Education goes a long way.  Although many women knew that sex with a condom was safe sex, men would often offer to pay extra to have sex without one.  Vatsalya's projects were so interesting because they educated both sides of the problem.  Educating sex workers and educating their clientele were equally important in reducing the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted infections.  Prevention is the best cure.