Home Grown Glory

Chapter 4
ABC and XYZ

I know you.
You come to my red light district,
Or to my border region truck stop,
Or to the shabeen where I hang out,
Or to the taxi ranks I frequent,
And you implement your “ABC” educational programs.

Yet why do you never ask me
My name?

You offer me condoms
To assist me in my profession
And ask if I know how to use them,
With your handy diagrams ready in case not.
You instruct me
That I regularly need to be tested for HIV at my local clinic,
And access ARVs if I am positive.

Yet why do you never ask me
How I am feeling today?

You quickly explain how abstinence is safest,
And how being faithful is the next best alternative.
Yet you do not dwell for long on such,
For you have labeled me
A prostitute,
Or more politely, a sex worker,
Whose apparent best hope
In my dismal reality of life circumstance
Is to use condoms
As I engage with countless customers,
Protecting myself from their infection
Or protecting them from what I may already have.

Yet why don’t you look me in the eye?
Why don’t you search for what is hidden in there,
For what I really want in my life,
For those dreams I used to have as a young girl
Which have long since been buried
Through year after year
Of pain, sadness and desperation,
And which now seem a distant and foolish pipedream?

With your expert training and respected position
You seem to be up on all the latest research,
Having published some of it yourself,
And you seem to know exactly what I need
From a short-term public health standpoint.

Yet why don’t you venture
Into that undefined territory
Of what I may need
From a lifelong prosperity standpoint?
Or do you see this as something too complex, too involved,
Too outside the realms of your expertise and funding
To be grasped and taken on?

You seem very comfortable
Talking with me openly
About sex and fluids and body parts and practices,
In line with the open-minded, non-offensive PC approach of the day.

Yet you seem ill equipped
To love me enough
To spend real time with me,
To dig into my life,
To discover roots of my woes
Or to address these roots in ways
That while painful and uncomfortable
Can potentially set me free
From this seemingly never-ending burden
I carry on my shoulders.
Rather you seem comfortable
To pass on this kind of “touchy feely” spiritual support
To local churches,
Churches that you simultaneously want to deliver
Your educational messages
To the masses, from the pulpit
In a decidedly one-way “partnership”.

Speaking of partners,
I hear you telling me
Never to trust the word of others,
To get myself tested for HIV
And demand that they get tested,
To look out for myself above all else.

Yet your message,
While public health friendly
And somehow concerned for my well-being,
Gives in to the pitiful confines
Of a fallen and inferior reality,
Rather than proclaiming and inspiring a higher one.
It subconsciously conveys
That the answer to my desperate situation
Is to stop trusting people,
To primarily save myself,
To close off my heart
And harden it as a wall
That will not let others in.

I see you delivering
Your As and Bs and Cs
To me and countless others
Who fit into your targeted demographic group
Of Most-at-risk persons between ages 15 and 24.
And I see that back in your office,
In front of your computer,
Your As and Bs and Cs for us
Get translated into Xs and Ys and Zs,
Columns of numbers in complicated tables
Of Monitoring and Evaluation,
As proof of your success
So you can get more funding.
I seem to fit into many of your categories:
Number of persons reached with A&B messages
And number receiving condoms,
Number referred for HIV testing services
And number tested as a result,
Number who tested positive
And number who are in follow-up care,
Number who are on ARVs
And number who are properly adhering to those ARVs,
And the list goes on.

Please tell me -
Am I a person
With a life and a past,
With a present and a future,
With problems and needs,
With dreams and aspirations,
With beautiful gifts and unique talents?
Or am I a number,
A quantitative indicator
That you have been successful in your job,
While in reality failing to fuel any change
In the troubling circumstances of my life?

I also see
That you like to write papers and abstracts
About people like me,
And fly off to international conferences
In beautiful places
To report on your programs,
To reveal your best practices,
To get your name and your organization’s name
On the radar screens
Of the world’s giants in the developmental aid industry.
I see your ego building itself up
In the midst of all this,
A perfect tower of Babylon
Built from foundations of my misery.
Meanwhile I am left to my same reality,
To my abusive home,
To my abusive customers,
To an abusive world
That likes to chew me up and spit me out.

And don’t think
That I don’t see you out there
Failing to practice
What you preach,
You who give me messages
About abstinence and faithfulness
And yet sleep around yourself,
Frequenting people like me
Or treating others as equally worthless in value
To people like me,
As you play with their lives and hearts,
Only agreeing with and adding in some way
To the misery of the massive, oppressive structure
In which I continue to live.
What can your weak and impotent message
Possibly mean to me?
How can it offer me something substantive,
That will help set me free?

I need role models
Who are loving and honest and transparent,
Who can lead me by inspirational example
Into a life of prosperity,
From the inside out.
I do not need
You with lies behind your eyes,
Pointing my attention
To bullet-pointed messages on a poster.

Do you know
About the brokenness in my family?
Do you know
That I’ve grown up without a father around?
Do you know
That I was pulled out of school in grade 5
To care for my sick mother
And to help with household chores?
Do you know
That I was told at home
To go out and sell myself
And not return at day’s end
Unless I bring money with me?
Do you know
How this made me feel inside?
Do you know
That I have been attacked and gang-raped
On more than one occasion,
Treated as a rag doll
To satisfy the demonic and bestial desires
Of those who are out of their minds
And know not what they do?