Episode 9

On Tuesday, we went and visited one of the truck stops in a very poor area. In India, truck routes are key to the spread of HIV/AIDS. While at the truck stop, we visited one of the centers for female sex workers and had a long conversation with a few of the sex workers as well as some of the peer advisers who work for the NGO. SWACH has set up these centers in order to educate a few sex workers in HIV, STI’s, and safe sex practices so that they may be educators for other sex workers in the area. It was a fascinating day as we got to hear their stories and listen to their struggles. Many of the women live in the slums, were widows and had no other means of providing for their children. After spending a few hours with them, their stories and lives become personal, they are real people with issues that we couldn't even imagine at home. I really enjoyed speaking with them and getting to know a few of them.

On Wednesday we went to one of the very rural areas, where we saw the different programs that SWACH had for adolescents and rural health. The most interesting part was seeing the struggle that these health workers face in the rural areas, where resources and education are lacking. The same systems and programs that work in urban areas can in no way function in some of these rural parts. Providing a meaningful and sustainable health program in these areas takes ingenuity, determination, and an open mind. Again, my respect for those working in this field grew immensely. While in the village, we visited one of the adolescent peer educator meetings, where youngsters would come to learn about a wide variety of issues and would pass the information on to other children in the village. Today’s Topic- Global Warming…. It was so odd coming from a place where we drive polluting cars, waste uncanny amounts of water, and dump countless chemicals into oceans, rivers, and fertile lands. And here I was, listening to these 15 or so teenagers talking about what their village can do to curb global warming. A village who has very few cars and is forced by necessity to use its resources wisely, how can this village help prevent the climate change that people like me have caused. Another one of those irreplaceable reality checks....