Savitri confronts serious issues about which she is passionate

I went to an event in town on Friday that was designed to raise awareness for gender-based violence - they gave people whistles and posters saying "I ring the bell for..." listing all sorts of actions that they want government to do to be more supportive of rape victims and other survivors of gender-based violence. Afterwards, I got to talk to Sonke Gender Justice Network, the organization behind the event, and found out that among many other initiatives they are working on improving education at clinics on the relation between gender stereotypes, violence, and HIV.

 I really appreciated this particular section of the organization because I have been feeling at the clinic rather useless at times. So often do I see people come in for either simple complaints like sore throats and fever in which they could buy on their own medicine (so say the nurses) or people who default on their medications for diabetes and high blood pressure or tuberculosis that they require more intense and expensive treatment. There is also an area for counseling at the clinic, but when a child comes in crying because their father just died or a girl has stomach pains and has been sexually abused is the help provided by the clinic going to cut it?

There are a lot of ways that the clinic is inefficient – from the method of patient filing to the lack of health education among the patrons where if they understood how to take care of themselves for simple ailments they would relieve the workload on the nurses and alleviate some of the chronic stress and pressure faced by the staff. So this prospect of bringing in a different method of patient health and gender education, while not entirely useful for solving the aforementioned issues, is exciting to me and something that I am passionate about.

While leaving town on a minibus we passed by another rally going on in Woodstock. I recognized the group as SWEAT (the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce) and I had a moment of indecision over whether or not to leave the minibus because I had to be somewhere rather soon. I decided at the last minute to ask the minibus to let me off, and as soon as I started walking towards the rally I felt like I was walking on clouds. I have been wanting to meet with this organization since my arrival here, what was keeping me back was work, fun, and forgetfulness. I was ecstatic to see them, though moved to hear what they were protesting – a police officer stationed just down the street is notorious for raping sex workers, forcing them to have sex for free, taking their condoms, and making raids on consensual work. I could but simultaneously could not believe that this was all happening so close to me. I know this happens in the U.S., in Hartford and likely other places much nearer to Westport and Storrs, and I’ve read countless accounts on sex work and nonconsensual sex work (my definition for forced or coerced or trafficked workers in sex industry) because that is what my thesis is focusing on. But it was still surreal to encounter it in my life and to hear the outraged voices of these women.

Later on, while riding a bus to Khayelitsha I couldn’t stop thinking about the sounds of the whistles that I had heard at both the Sonke and SWEAT rallies. The whistles added their own reality to my experience last Friday, International Women’s Day. This rough poem I wrote most adequately describes my feeling:

The shrill of whistles burns my ears

It grows louder and louder like a tumor inside me

Filling my space and pushing me out

I’m no longer myself but the rain pouring in

And the screams of millions echoing in my ears

Their screams, like sick, scary whistles

Silenced by the media, silenced by law

Hush, we silence each other, not letting

One another speak

These whistles, breaking the dam of our ear drums

Like the dam of virginity is broken in a moment of

Fear, happiness, love – rape

Imagine the source of these screams

Where are they coming from?

Who screams in the night, in the day,

In the forest when no one is around?

Whose screams fill these whistles

Like the air around a suffocating throat

Heavy and thick and still

Full of potential, the potential to break

Whose spirits are conducting this choir

Of unspoken, silent screams

The shrill of whistles burns by ears

And the tears come rolling down my

Other self, the self that hears, that listens

And doesn’t silence.