My First Prostitute

It was another humid day in Delhi, the sudden downpour of the morning had passed and the burning rays of the sun were shining through as we wondered the streets waiting for the call, then it came; they were ready to meet us. Straight away we headed for the car and off to the pick up point. Parked at the side of the road our man must have made a bee line for the car, as before I knew it a casually dressed India man had got into the back of the car and we were off, following his directions to the head office. A short drive later and we arrived; he got out of the car and introduced himself. No longer the mysterious stranger Alok took up us to the head office of the Target Intervention Program (TIV).

In the office

We sat squeezed into this one small room that operated as the nerve center come office for the scheme. Originally set up as a government scheme aimed at reducing STI (Sexually Transmitted Infections) and HIV/AIDS among sex workers, as well as education them on the matter it was now a fully fledged operation. In the room we met three other workers. Two of whom were volunteers from a local college. They had not chosen to work here as it was a requirement of the college, but both informed me that their involvement had opened there eyes to the possibility of going into social work with one boy particularly interested in working with street children. The other person in the room was a young woman recently graduated from university with a degree in philosophy, who was the councilor for the approximately 600 women the project had under their wing. As well as counseling the project also integrates, health check-ups, screening for STIs, and distribution of contraception as well as standard check ups. This project for looking after roughly 600 women has only 14 worker, one project manager to oversee all the work; one councilor who provides counseling as well as, organizing the appointments at local hospitals for health check, screenings and deliveries so the women don’t have to give birth on the street. Then two outreach workers with their five pees. They do the ground work, delivering the contraception, both male and female condoms; and complete the checkup charts, each sex workers activities are tracked to keep and eye on weather they are using the condoms and to see if they are going to the education centers as well as keeping an eye on any other needs/problems they may have. From these charts any problems can be flagged up and the workers can then be referred to the councilor to make the appropriate arrangements.

view of mosque

After being fully briefed I was taken to a ‘hub’ were the women and occasionally men work. This particular hub was on the back door or a Mosque. As we approached you could see this vast grand structure in the distance, a beautifully work of architecture, its red bricked walls with fine detail and ornate marble minarets made it unmissable. But as we drove closer a different picture started to emerge. There had once been beautiful gardens to accompany the structure but now they were a garden of waste and destruction with water fountains left to ruin and grassland turned to mud baths filled with plastic bottles. As I got out of the car I was hit by the smell; feces and urine wafting through the humid heat. It didn’t take long to find our first two prostitutes. A pair of shy, giggly girls, one about 19 and the other roughly 27 but it was hard to tell there real age behind the dry, knocked back hair, black teeth and greasy black skin; the result of living on the streets all there life. Alok spoke to them about the importance of going to the groups provide and queried the 27yr old as to why she wasn’t going. She was very apologetic and said she understood the importance but had not been going as she was pregnant. After a while we left them to there business and walk on a bit more. We mad our way though the narrow market streets; but this was a very different markets to most in India it had quite a foreign feel the design of the shake were different, made from sheets not blue plastic; the streets seemed busier due to the small size of the walk ways and the items on sale raged from drills to DVDs. Not that I’ve ever been to a Middle Eastern market but this is what I imagine it to feel like. The next worker we found at home; a bed pushed up against the wall of the Mosque with a tree to help shelter it from the elements. This was the home of one woman and her 4 children, one a new borne baby that she had delivered right there under that tree. When we arrived a man best described as a pimp was sitting on the bed with her. BOB introduced me, told her where I was from then got to work. It soon emerged since the birth of her 4^th child that she couldn’t manage to look after them all. ‘They have no father’ she remarked, despite the displeasure of the ‘pimp’ arguing that he could be there farther she continued.  Her wish was for two of her children to go into one of the homes run by the brotherhood, to give them and education and a chance at a better life than she had. After a while we left them and made our way to the car. On route Alok explained to me that the Mosque was the reason this are had become a hub. Some members of the Muslim community were exploiting the right to have more than one wife; a principal used to support women who had lost there husbands at war; to justify the uses of prostitutes. “They’re hypocrites justifying there behaviors by there religion”.

The Mosque is just one of the ten hubs of activity in Delhi but all the hubs provide the same concerns for the workers. As in most society prostitutes India has a very low opinion of prostitutes, so the clients often abuses the Sex workers, reports of women with cuts and cigarette burns are common. As well as this there is great difficulty in getting the women to uses the condoms provided, many men will pay much more money to not use them which put the women at greater risk. The workers are trying to get the women to refuse these men explaining how dangerous it is for them but most are so poor they can’t afford to say no. Another problem which has started to be resolved is police corruption, a problem throughout the hole of India. In this case police would allow the workers to take clients but then interrupt them and demand money from both the workers and clients to avoid prosecution. To combat this problem the government has started to train the police that they are trying to help the sex workers and this behavior will be doing the opposite.

This is a new project that has a long way to go but it appears to be having a positive impact on the sex workers giving them much needed rescores and information also the brotherhood supports a project that looks after the workers children during ‘business hours’, so hopefully the combination of these two projects can help the children to avoid the same fate as there parents and for those that don’t escape and for the workers themselves make their chosen profession a safer place and one they full understand the dangers of.