It was noon and Baina, the redlight area in downtown Vasco city in Goa, was stirring. Outside the `Disco Bar', a gaggle of girls dressed in gaudy coloured clothes and with cheap baubles for accessories and painted faces, waited for their customers to arrive. Inside, the Disco Bar, girls sat around in groups, giggling and talking of `girlish' things. In the daytime, the place is not as lively and vibrant as it is at night. At night, the strobe lights come on, and the girls drink and dance with men, who they later take to their boudoirs.Right next door to the Disco Bar, is Christopher's bar. But Christopher's bar is different. For in the morning, at one corner, he has permitted the Vasco Anti-AIDS Association to run a small counselling centre and AIDS awareness clinic, sponsored by the UK-based NGO Francios Xavier Bagnoud (FXB). Some of the girls are volunteers at this centre. They have taken on the responsibility of spreading the message of protection against HIV and use of condoms.
``In the beginning it was very difficult for me to even convince them to open such a centre here," says Ms Sheila Thomas, a counsellor of the Vasco Anti-AIDS Association. "Most of the women did not trust me and the gharwalis were even more skeptical," she says. But today, after nearly a year of this centre's operation, Ms Thomas has managed to convince a few gharwalis, several hundred girls and a few motorcycle pilots, who ferry customers back and forth to Goa's only recognised redlight area. And there is no dearth of customers, with workers and truckers from Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum, Zauri Agro Chemicals, Goa Shipyard Limited, Marmagoa Port Trust and the Vasco Port terminus, all being a stone's throw from Baina. ``Because Baina is surrounded largely by industrial houses, over 50 per cent of the customers are non-Goan migrant workers,'' says Dr Rajnath Desai, who heads the STD clinic at Baina. ``The workers being migrants, it becomes difficult to educate them, instead we concentrate on the girls andteach them safe sex practices,'' she says."We have heard about AIDS and how it spreads, so we want to be careful now.
Also, many girls have died of AIDS," says Ms P Bhavani, a commercial sex worker. Ms Bhavani comes from Vijaywada district as do most of the girls in this area. "Almost 80 per cent of the girls are from Andhra Pardesh and the rest are from Belgaum or Dharwad districts in Karnataka,'' she says. All the girls relate tales of poverty and misery in their villages that have forced them into prostitution.
Ms Bhavani has a son, young brother and aging parents to take care of. "My husband deserted me and I had to find a job so that I could earn enough money to take care of my family," she says. She manages to earn Rs 500 a day and sends almost all her earning home. And many other too face similar circumstances. Like Ms G Raji, who has been in Baina only for 10 days, after an aunt told her how she could get out of her poverty by becoming a commercial sex worker. ``This is just a job as far as I am concerned. I need the money to support my family at home,'' she says.
The hazards of this job are well-known to them. The girls realise that they need to protect themselves and most of them make sure the customers use condoms. Even the motorcycle pilots have donned the role of AIDS educators and counsel customers while driving them to Baina. ``I have lived in Baina for 30 years and have seen many girls fall ill. Today, I tell each customer about AIDS and STDs and ask them to use condoms for their own sake," says Mr Sidappa, who hails from Belgaum district in Karnataka.
On Sundays, all the girls collect their week's supply of condoms. ``We ask for all our customers, except one or two men who are more like our boyfriends now,'' says Ms Raji. There are three other NGOs, which work in the area.
The effectiveness of the counselling centre is evident in the fact that the incidence of STD and HIV has decreased in the area. ``We do regular tests and also proper pre- and post-test counselling for these girls. The incidence of STDs and unwanted pregnancies has come down dramatically since this clinics started a year ago," says Dr Desai.
While the government is planning to close the STD clinics for some inexplicable reasons, Dr Desai hopes that these clinics will run with FXB funding. FXB also supports Asha Sadan, a home for children of prostitutes run by Sr Lorenza in Baina. The children here are given basic education and vocation training. "So far, 70 children have been placed in various boarding schools around Goa," says Sr Lorenza.
``You can't just run an anti-AIDS clinic and hope it will work. You have to run welfare programmes for their children and take care of their other needs too,' says Dr Desai.
With such effective programes for the welfare of commercial sex workers taking root, Baina is fast becoming a model area for other redlight areas in the country to follow.
(Travel for this field visit was sponsored by FXB India.)
Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
