Raipur's truck stops are the better for a CARE project on safe sex

Today, Savita is a picture of empowerment, her face brimming with confidence as she reaches into the bamboo basket on her head to find the green CARE bag containing the "life-savers". She is now a CARE peer-educator, meeting and talking everyday to the drivers and sex workers at Raipur’s Tatibandh, a trucker hub. Amid the heat and dust, while truckers and helpers stop for rest and refreshment—more than 1,500 of them pass through this area everyday—Savita mingles and engages in discussions on safe sex. She’s a regular at the dhabas, frequently starting up discussions on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including on HIV/AIDS.

Every month, Savita leads more than a dozen grateful truckers to the nearby CARE clinic for help. There, in a space donated by the local transporters’ union, a doctor offers treatment and medicines to last for the required duration of the treatment or till the trucker’s next trip to Raipur. Vinod, cured of an agonising four-year syphilis infliction, thanked Savita with a purple sari.

Savita also counsels and brings in other commercial sex workers into the project. Along with Geeta Bai, Shanti and Sunita, Savita tries to spread the good word, educating colleagues about STDs and AIDS, and always to use the "life-saving" condoms.

CARE helps Savita and over 55,000 others, including the drivers, sex workers, dhabha owners, barbers, transporters, petrol-pump attendants and paan shop-owners—promoting responsible sexual behaviour along the 65-km stretch of Tatibandh, Bhanpuri and parts of National Highway No. 6 in Raipur city. The project, named oktata (Orientation of Key Truckers, Associates and Transporters on AIDS), has been operational since July 1999, and looks at expanding impact through innovative approaches. Now, with funding from the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the project follows a three-pronged strategy—using behaviour change communication, condom promotion and syndromic management of stds among this high-risk mobile population. Transport company owners and members of transport associations are also providing support to the project.

The police have also been sensitised to reduce harassment of drivers and sex workers carrying condoms. Savita proudly talks about a policeman client whom she firmly told off—"no condom-no sex". oktata’s Irfan Akhtar insists on "regular infotainment programmes" as this encourages "private and sensitive interactions" for both confidential one-on-ones as well as group exchanges on HIV-AIDS. Shanti, 40, a sex worker and also a CARE peer educator, points to the project’s success, citing the fact that now policemen have started asking for condoms for their own use! She says that even police harassment has come down, and that when it does occur the "grateful drivers" helped by her (who suffered from diseases like syphilis) at the CARE Clinic "come to help us and even tell the cops to lay off." Geeta Bai, another sex worker, says "the police don’t trouble us as long as we dole out condoms to them". The latter’s attitude towards them has also seen a switch, from "low and judgemental to one of confidence and respect", she adds.

Recently, at a National AIDS Control Organisation workshop in Calcutta, Savita, as a peer educator on CARE’s OKTATA team, received the best prize for excellent presentation and contributing ideas for producing the best street play. To find out more about empowered women like Savita and also care’s oktata project, contact Harry Sethi, director, external relations, CARE, 27 Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi-110016. Ph: 91 11 6564101. Email: hsethi@careindia.org