After we had had breakfast, we set off for our first full day of filming. I was quite nervous because I was unsure of what to expect in the villages and expected to be greeted with a degree of hostility – given that we were literally turning up in their homes with a video camera and attempting to interview them about a controversial topic, which seemed shocking to us, but was in fact deeply embedded within their culture.
We arrived at the village after about an hours drive which included sights on the way such as a freshly run over dog and an overturned truck. When we arrived in the village, we were greeted by all of the villagers in an extremely friendly and exited way. People were incredibly more open that I had expected with us, we were able to meet the women sex workers and their children who were directly affected and sadly influenced by their mothers choice of profession. As we walked around the houses we were able to see girls dressed in their best clothes, wearing make up ready to start the days work and simply waiting for their clients. Perhaps most shocking for me today, was meeting two girls working as commercial sex workers who were the same age as me. They looked dreadfully unhappy, and I came to the realization that apart from age I had nothing in common with these girls, they lead what I can only recognize as a terribly traumatic way of life, where the easiest way to get money is to have to work in the sex trade. I found it hard to grasp that this was in fact encouraged by their parents, because I know for a fact that my parents would never choose a path like that for me. I can only conclude it is because their culture and tradition is so different to the one that i have been subjected to in my sheltered upbringing. We spoke with a retired sex worker who had been inactive for ten years who was thirty and had eight children whom she said would never have to follow in her footsteps. To me this was such a massive contrast to the girls sitting around waiting for their clients. It give me a small amount of hope that if the work of World Vision could affect this woman’s attitude, then others would also be more likely to rethink their decisions. Commercial sex work seemed part of every day life to these people, it was unhidden, very frank, accepted and open. Interestingly, there were two girls within the village who said they didn’t like living there and disliked the people within the community and who went onto say that they want to get out of the village and are not sex workers.
We played with the children in the village who walked around barefoot on the ground which was strewn with used condoms, rubbish and the odd razor blade. They were clearly unaware of the dangers of HIV and AIDS and this was normality to them, yet I couldn't imagine what living like this would be like. We played with the children, blowing bubbles and bouncing a ball we had brought with us, which some of the children had clearly never done in their lives. It was comforting to think that with the sufficient funding, World Vision would be able to ensure that the future generations like the children we were playing with would be saved from a life of sex work, and the worry of sexually transmitted infections and deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS.
After lunch, we visited the second village where World Vision had been working for ten years, it was wonderful to see the profound and positive effect that World Vision had had on the village over the past decade. It really highlighted the sheer potential of what the other villages could become. We were told that 100% of the children within this village attended school, and there were no commercial sex workers working in the village itself and only 12 women who had been trafficked away in order to earn money in the sex trade in major cities such as Mumbai.
We were able to meet Abhishak, a thriteen year old orphaned boy who is HIV positive. His mother had died the previous year, and he is now living with his uncle and a younger sibling who is not HIV positive. Tragically, he told us that he misses his mother very much, and talked about her dying of ‘a disease’. This highlighted to me that he was unable to completely understand the condition that killed his mother and could eventually kill him – probably because of his young age but probably also because HIV and AIDS are not understood or recognized to be illnesses as serious as they are. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain he was feeling while talking about his family and I could tell it was still very raw for him having only lost his mother a year ago. He explained how he has never known or met his father, which made me assume that his father was most probably one of his mother’s clients.
Meeting a young boy who was suffering from such a deadly disease was heartbreaking for me because it could easily have been avoided. People within the villages seemed not to fully understand the danger of the HIV virus, or the potential consequences of unprotected sex. This young boy had been given HIV by his mother who died of AIDS – but this could easily have been avoided with the adequate sexual education, and if she had been given the option to have a different career.
As far as treatment is concerned, we were told that Antiretrolviral medication is available from major cities in India such as Jaipur free of charge. Abhishak was receiving this treatement, but would only be able to carry on with this if World Vision continued their work in that village, because they were able to provide him with a means of transport to get to Jaipur once a month in order to get his medication, which he would otherwise not be able to get because we would have no other means of actually getting to Jaipur. This made me realize how many peoples lives greatly depended on the funding which World Vision receives every year.
Allen explained to us about peoples’ attitudes towards the virus within the village, and how sufferers would be ostracized by the people within the community. People within the village with the virus itself feel unable to admit their disease to other villagers for fear of being told to leave. We were told that there were some cases where parents found out that their children were suffering from the virus and made them leave the family home because they themselves did not want to be associated with the disease. These children would then simply live on the streets of Jaipur because they had no means of getting food or shelter apart from to beg. Ironically it was probably the parents who passed the disease onto their children in the first place. Furthermore if the villagers know that they have the disease, they do not get tested because this will cause them to have to admit their condition, this means they cannot openly go and get the antiviral medication which would prolong their life. So effectively, because of peoples inability to admit they are ill, they are not receiving treatment like abishek.
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