Sunday, February 11, 2007

An Arisan

Today GC had an "arisan" for a group of women helping GC with their new program for getting pregnant women in Makassar access to HIV testing and, if they are HIV positive, antiretroviral medicine which not only helps preserve their health but drastically reduces the chance that their children will be infected with HIV when born. An "arisan" is a kind of rotating credit association - these are found all over Indonesia and indeed all over the world. In Indonesia as in many places, they are for women. Basically, a fixed group of women meets every week and puts a fixed amount of money into a pot. A name is drawn and that woman gets the money. The next week the winner has to keep participating, but her name is taken out of the running until all of the other women have won. So it's not really gambling - it evens out in the end - but it's a way for women to get a larger sum of money at once every so often to use for household purchases, for instance - almost a kind of savings account. And it's an occasion to get together and gossip with friends.


This particular arisan served as the occasion to plan a program for 8 areas in Makassar so that the local health clinics can refer pregnant women to GC for testing. This program was pioneered in Jakarta by another organization, which with support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, is being extended to other parts of Indonesia. The women will keep meeting regularly for the arisan and to make sure the program moves forward - should be good.


Tonight I went with a couple friends to the waterfront here in Makassar. The city is really trying to spruce up the waterfront - they've moved all the food stalls down to one end and have added a big plaza. It should have spectacular views of the sunset - I'll try to check that out soon. One of the folks who came with us is a person living with AIDS who's getting support from GC staff. I won't reveal anything more about the person on this blog to protect confidentality, but it was very interesting to learn a little about what the person is experiencing. Sadly, this is a change from when I was doing HIV/AIDS work here 14 years ago, 7 years ago, even just 3 years ago - more and more persons are getting diagnosed with HIV, getting ill with diseases to the point they get defined as living with AIDS, and even passing away. It lends a new urgency to what I'm trying to do here. Just in the last two days I'm already getting a bunch of interesting ideas for how to focus my research.

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