HIV+ prostitute won't use condoms "because it's faster"

Got something to share with the reading public that isn't an action but should be read?

Moderators: delphyne, oneangrygirl, deedle, sam

HIV+ prostitute won't use condoms "because it's faster"

Postby sam » Mon Aug 16, 2010 8:16 am

Why should we carry HIV burden: hookers
Written by Gift Phiri
Saturday, 14 August 2010 13:38

HARARE – From her looks alone or what she does for a living – during the day that is -- you could never tell that Sarah, 31, is living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. (Pictured: A hooker on the look out for clients – Many sex workers will agree to unprotected sex for the right fee)

Healthy looking and beautiful, too, Sarah runs a thriving flea market business selling mainly second hand clothes to Harare’s working class residents to raise money to send her 14-year old daughter to school. But that is not all the vendor sells to survive.

By night, the innocent looking clothes seller prowls Harare’s Avenues red-light district, this time literally vending her body to any man who will pay the right fee.

Sarah, who has been in the flesh peddling business for the past nine years, keeps her HIV status secret to not only family and friends -- but also to her clients many of whom she admits to sleeping with without using condoms.

Having unprotected sex with strangers is probably how Sarah acquired the virus in the first place. And by continuing to sleep with men without using condoms, she is endangering her own life because of the risk of re-infection. She is also endangering the lives of her clients, their wives and girlfriends.

Sarah knows this but she justifies her clearly reckless sexual behaviour – just as she does her decision to become a prostitute – by citing what she describes as her “urgent need” to raise as much cash as quickly as is possible to take home to her daughter.

Why should I care?

"I charge US$20 for a short time and prefer not to use a condom, because it's faster. I can make money easily and go home,” she told The Zimbabwean on Sunday last week.

"I need money now more than ever before. My daughter is a bright student and I want her to go to university so that she can get a well-paid job when she grows up and not end up like me,” said Sarah, adding that she also needed extra cash to look after her 65-year old and ailing widowed father.

Pressed on why she would deliberately put her own life and the lives of unsuspecting strangers at risk by agreeing to sleep with them without using condoms, Sarah readily admits she is wrong.

She even wonders loudly whether things could have been different had she insisted on using condoms from the very first day she decided to extend her vending business to selling sex on Harare’s streets.

"I can’t turn back the hands of time. I should have demanded condoms, but I was careless," she said.

But Sarah staunchly refuses to shoulder the blame alone, insisting – and perhaps rightly so -- that the men who leave their wives and girlfriends to come to her and agree to sleep with her without using condoms should also take responsibility for their actions.

"Most of the men won't use a condom,” Sarah said. “Every man who takes girls from the street should realise the risk of contracting HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases. It appears to me that they don't really care, so why should I?”

In a sense, she is right. Why should women -- be they prostitutes or not -- shoulder the burden of combating HIV/AIDS alone while their male partners are allowed to do as they please?

But it is exactly this kind of attitude displayed by Sarah – where she and her fellow sex workers will have unprotected sex with any stranger for the right fee – that has made prostitutes the social group most vulnerable to HIV infection.

80 percent positive

According to the National Aids Council (NAC) 80 percent of all prostitutes who have gone for HIV testing in the past five years in Zimbabwe were found positive, an unacceptably high infection rate given the amount of money and effort that went into HIV awareness and education campaigns targeting the country’s sex industry since the mid-80s.

But more worrying, according to NAC’s behaviour change manager Oscar Mundi, the high infection rates among prostitutes means they remain a reservoir of HIV from which the virus could easily spread to other population groups, especially if one takes into account the attitude of Sarah and her friends.

"Of all the vulnerable groups, prostitutes are the largest group contributing to the spread of the disease as well as the most likely to get infected," Mundi told an HIV/AIDS workshop in Harare last week.

But it is not just behavioral change by prostitutes and their clients alone that is required to stem the HIV/AIDS tide. More needs to be done to combat the poverty that in the first place drives hundreds of innocent girls like Sarah into prostitution.

As Sarah explained when asked how she ended up on the streets. “I am not the only one who ended up this way. Many other girls who left their villages to come to Harare to look for work have ended up as prostitutes …. and HIV-positive like me,” she said.

A poor education meant Sarah could not get a high paying job when she arrived in the capital. With her ageing parents and growing daughter ever in need of more cash for their upkeep and education, Sarah, who grew up in Bhora district in Mashonaland East province, was soon forced to take up the only option that appeared the easiest to raise immediate cash – prostitution!

And the lesson from Sarah’s sad story is clear: an economy that pays workers living wages and generates enough revenue for the government to ensure adequate education and skills training for the girl child is vital to any effort to defeat HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe.

But whether such an economy is achievable in a country ruled by a coalition of three ever squabbling political parties is, as the over used cliché goes, the million-dollar question.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
chaotic good
 
Posts: 4391
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:54 am

Re: HIV+ prostitute won't use condoms "because it's faster"

Postby delphyne » Mon Aug 16, 2010 9:59 am

Well that makes sense. If you're being raped you want the rape over as quickly as possible.
delphyne
antiporn star
 
Posts: 2930
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 10:59 am


Return to essays, articles, rants for public view

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 36 guests

cron