20 for 300

Today was the 4th day of the lifeskills training for HIV+ women - it's been very interesting. The women are really opening up and talking to each other. In a couple cases they've only known of their HIV status for a short time and the difference a few days makes has been remarkable. One woman brought her 6 year old son for the day - we helped entertain him. It was hard because he has a father, mother, and uncle all positive, and his mother is pregnant and of course we don't know if the infant will be infected or not. Yet it's great to see the positive attitude this woman has - she is a real fighter, all of the women are.

So speaking of fighters, since we've been basically cooped up in a hotel for 4 days, I decided to take all of the women and staff to see a movie - that's 20 people. Here that means thirty dollars, basically taking 3 people to a movie in California, so very worth it. It was at a mall right across the street from the hotel, we surprised the women by saying we were going on an excursion and then they were surprised to find out we were going to watch a movie! The only things showing were 300 and some Indonesian horror films - Indonesians love horror films, but since I'm still sleeping alone at the GC office for another week, we decided on 300. We had great fun watching the film all together; a nice change of pace and I was happy to offer folks a breather. Tomorrow I'm on the agenda to teach a module on HIV immunology, which will be intense since they are all HIV positive, so good to have some fun beforehand.

The right place at the right time...

Sometimes it turns out you're in the right place at the right time - that's half of what anthropology is about, getting yourself in the right place for happy coincidences to happen. I was at the third day of the lifeskills training for HIV+ women (which is going great) when one of the GC staff got a phone call stating that Nafsiah Mboi, the secretary of the National AIDS Commission, was in town for a day and wanted to meet with NGO representatives this night. Akbar (GC's director) is in Jakarta for almost two weeks for a training, so we decided that I would accompany two GC staff to the meeting. We got there and it ended up being a meeting of only 15 people - I'm so glad we were there because we got to do some good advocacy work. Mboi is a remarkable woman, dedicated to the cause of HIV/AIDS and really understands the kind of networking and planning that needs to happen. All very interesting!

Busy days

A busy day yesterday and another one today, so will keep this brief... another visit to a puskesmas - a large one as you can see. Then in the afternoon a return visit to a puskesmas for post-test counseling. We are finding some HIV-positive pregnant women through the program, so that's good, but of course stressful too. Even for a trained counselor it's hard to tell anyone, including a pregnant woman, that they are HIV positive (and in the case of a pregnant woman, that their child might be infected too). In the evening, another kelompok diskusi where a person living with HIV talked to a group of gay men and waria -very moving.

The other big thing is that I'm researching with the GC staff possibilities for future funding for the organization. Some of the proposals are AMAZINGLY complicated (with 150-page forms!), so this will be a major project for the next month and something I can actually talk about in my research. Quite interesting. Even busy form-filling work can be part of anthropology!

Mediations

I won't go into the details, but had a good day yesterday in which I was able to mediate between GC and a group of gay men (mostly educated types, with good computer skills and such) who had essentially broken away from GC due to what turned out to be nothing more than a misunderstanding. They came to GC to see me as a "neutral person" to talk about their plans for the future, knowing that it would give them a chance to talk to the GC staff too. So I was able to mediate the conflict and now they're going to do some interesting events together, and also help the GC staff out with computers and such.

I've seen needless conflict undermine groups in Java and Bali so many times, so I've got some experience with this, and I'm glad I was able to help mediate this misunderstanding. We'll see what happens, but things look good. Every little thing that keeps the focus on the important things is helpful.

The AIDS support group

Had a nice day working in the office all day - mostly helping a couple people get in their proposals for the Asia/Pacific AIDS conference before the deadline tomorrow. These kinds of seemingly boring routines can be a gold mine for anthropologists, so it's still quite interesting to me.

Then tonight was something special - attending my first meeting of the AIDS support group. 12 people attending, all living with HIV. Some have an official AIDS diagnosis; a few are taking antiretrovirals, some not - mainly because due to the rationing of the free medications, you have to have a T4 cell count under 200 (which is quite low) to get access to them. Which is interesting in itself of course. I did an HIV 101 discussion and they were transfixed - their access to info is fairly limited. The GC staff know more but a refresher doesn't hurt them either.

I explained how reverse transcriptase and protease work in HIV replication - and how these are the two things that antiretrovirals work against. To explain protease I ran into the next room and came back with a pair of scissors, pretending to cut myself to show how T4 cells infected with HIV use protease to disassemble themselves to make new HIV unless there's a protease inhibitor. Folks wanted an explanation of resistance and don't ask me why, but what came to mind as an allegory was shooting rabbits in your yard and if you don't kill them all, the ones who don't get shot are probably the smarter ones so their baby rabbits will be smarter and harder to kill. They got it, so I guess it worked!

It was very interesting to see what kinds of questions they asked. Some had to do with injecting heroin, which is sadly really on the rise here and a major engine behind the explosive growth of HIV infections. Others had to do with things they'd read in the newspaper or had been told by quack doctors about "cures" for HIV/AIDS. Very frustrating. I talked about the difference between such false hopes and true hopes - like the potential for effective integrase inhibitors or CD4 blockers that could even represent a cure someday in the future. That was helpful to people.

They are very brave - they know that they have some serious issues to face with their HIV infection, but they are also committed to taking steps to protect their health. Though it's frustrating to see how many of them smoke still - smoking is such a problem here.

Beach meetings

I had a wonderful time at the strategic planning meeting. We stayed at Tanjung Bunga, a resort beach just 5 miles or so from the GC office. The office rented two beach houses.


We were just 20 feet or so from the beach - beautiful sunsets with all of the little islands out in the Makassar Strait, and lots of ships too.


The beach wasn't the cleanest in the world but it was fine, the water was bathtub warm and very calm (the strait is a pretty protected waterway, nothing like for instance the beaches in south Bali, which face right out to the Indian Ocean).


Saturday night was particularly beautiful. We spent the day doing some really interesting planning for the future of the organization and also to pick a new director (Akbar is going to become more of a chair of the board of directors kind of thing, still coming to the office every day but freer to do more lobbying and training work). Here I am leading a session on HIV updates:


And here I am taking notes in a breakout group working on ideas to improve medical and social care for gay men and warias with AIDS:


Lots of productive discussions--it was a great opportunity to be involved, particularly since I'm one of 4 people currently on their advisory board!





All throughout the 3 days we've eaten wonderful food - lots of fresh fish - looked by a lesbian friend of GC who is an amazing cook.



After the evening session where we picked the new director for GC (Azis, who's been with the organization since 1993 and is an old friend), we went outside to find the quarter moon above the ocean and beautiful white reflections on the waves, with tall pale white thunderclouds too. Distant flashes of lightning every so often, and stars above - it's nice to see the Southern Cross again, and Orion right overhead and the Big Dipper upside down on the northern horizion. A nice cool breeze and the squid-hunting fishing boats out on the water with their strong lights they use to attract the squid looked like a little village out at sea. Saturday night so lots of kids from town on the beach hanging out, playing guitar or chatting. Several of us thought we'd sleep out on one of the bamboo huts, so we just lay there for a long time talking and watching the waves. By about 1am though the beautiful sea breeze was getting stronger and the lightning more frequent - rain was clearly on its way, so we went inside - a good decision because it started pouring rain about 30 minutes later, quite a din on the tin roof of the beach house as I fell asleep thinking of my loved ones eating a sunny breakfast on the other side of the world.

At the Kafe Bibliotek

Friday morning, before heading off for the strategic planning meeting, I (and a waria friend from GC) went and spoke to a group of British and Indonesian university students about sexuality in Indonesia. The group is finishing up a 6-month exchange program (half in the UK, half in Indonesia) run through Global Exchange. The event was held at Kafe Bibliotek, which is a building out towards Hasanuddin University that's apparently owned by a Japanese guy living in town (connected to the consulate? need to learn more). It's got a nice little library and is open to all - you just pay for a drink and you can sit and read all you want, which is a pretty rare setup in Indonesia. Quite nice.

The discussion was great - the students asked great questions and we had a very lively and supportive discussion. My waria friend who came along really enjoyed herself and plans on going back there.

Meetings and meetings

Today I attended a weekly staff meeting here at GC. It was a good opportunity to reconnect with everyone in a more structured manner and also explain what I would be doing for the next two months. One of the main activities GC does are these "discussion groups" where staff have regular meetings with groups of people in the community. I've been involved with the design of this program over the years, which has been a huge success and I think will be one of the things I really study. The great thing is how excited people are to have me come participate in their groups - by the end of the day we had a jam-packed schedule for me for the rest of the week. Things are going to get super-busy soon, I think. After the meeting I did an impromptu English class for the staff, which was great fun. They'd like me to do English classes at least once a week and I'm happy to oblige.

Then later in the afternoon Akbar and I attended a meeting at the Mayor's office that was a kind of wrap-up from the national meeting in Surabaya last week. It was interesting to hear about the various plans for moving forward. Compared to years past, the government is really taking an interest in responding to the epidemic and working with the nonprofits - it's very exciting in that regard. Then on the way back to the GC office we stopped by a nonprofit that works with drug users trying to break the addiction. They're getting 90% HIV infection rates amongst this group sometimes - it's just staggering.

Tonight Akbar and I had dinner with Ilmi, who's my academic sponsor for this researcher. Bill and I got to know Ilmi back in 2001 when I was going my postdoc at the Australian National University; Ilmi spent 4 years there doing her PhD in anthropology. She's interested in gender issues and also in starting research on HIV/AIDS, so it's pretty certain we're going to be collaborating into the future, which should be great. It's nice to have local colleagues, and she's wonderful for exchanging ideas.

No pictures today, but I'll be doing various things tomorrow that should be photo-worthy. I keep forgetting to take a picture of the front of the GC office - I'll try to do that tomorrow.

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.

Planning

Today was the final wrap-up session of the HIV/AIDS conference. Lots more schmoozing around with friends old and new. Then this afternoon had an important meeting at Gaya Nusantara. This is the oldest gay group in Indonesia and one I've been working with since 1992. They recently decided to create a Board of Directors as they grow the organization, and I was one of the two people they have initially asked to sit on that board. I got to see their new office, which they've had for over two years now but I hadn't seen before. They're renting a house which is what most nonprofits do; it's a large house with lots of rooms, great for their needs:



At the meeting I expressed once again my thanks for all they've done for me and talked about the possibility of me coming to Surabaya next summer for 4 weeks to do a training for activists and a second one for researchers. Might be fun...



They're a great bunch of people and several of them I've known for 15 years now, so we've got a long history together. They do great work and though I'm excited to be flying to Makassar tomorrow, I wish I had more time to spend with them.

Day 3 of the National HIV/AIDS conference

Today was another good day at the conference. Heard a couple good talks but the best part was all the networking and just hanging out with HIV/AIDS activists from all over Indonesia.


It's a great way to get caught up as to what's going on in various parts of Indonesia, to make new friends and catch up with old ones.



Then in the afternoon was an important meeting between the new national network for HIV prevention among men who have sex with men. The meeting was with Nafsiah Mboi; she is head of the National AIDS Commission. All the rooms were being used so we met with her in the lobby. The new network was formed at a meeting I attended on Monday, and I was asked to attend this one as well.


Here she is talking to Dede Oetomo, my colleague. At one point during the discussion he talked about how "we're working with Professor Tom Boellstorff from the University of California" and pointed over to me and I smiled and waved. Anything I can do to help lend credibility to the network is a help.


She was very supportive and I'm hopeful this meeting will help ensure that the new national AIDS plan takes gay men and transgenders into account.

Day 1 of the National HIV/AIDS conference

Day 1 of the conference was a lot of fun. There is a big opening plenary with lots of big names including the Minister for People's Welfare, then some interesting sessions in the afternoon. Best was one on "celebrating the contributions of the first generation" that was a kind of roundtable for people had been doing HIV/AIDS work in Indonesia from early on. I saw many old friends there, some of whom I hadn't seen in 14 years! It's been great seeing so many old friends - Made, Doggie, Tuti, and Abby from Bali (they would love for me to come back there for a visit!), Esthi, Ian, and Herry from Surabaya, and many others. Made some new connections too. After all the traveling the last few days, it's great to just sit in place for a bit and get caught up on the situation here in Indonesia.

Since it's a conference, I didn't get many particularly interesting pics, but here's one of me with Akbar (from Makassar) and Egi (from Jakarta).

Opening night

Opening night of the national HIV/AIDS conference was great - a LOT more reconnecting with old friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in 10 years or more. These pics aren't the best but give a bit of a feel. The real action will start tomorrow - I know it's hard to get excited about a conference, but this is very useful to me in terms of getting the latest info, and also this wonderful side benefit of meeting so many friends.

Reconnecting

This afternoon I was invited to attend a small workshop for gay men from all over Indonesia, the follow-up to an Asia-wide meeting held a view months ago in Delhi. It was great - I got to connect with many old friends and participate in brainstorming about building the national network. I even helped with a little translating for some other non-Indonesians present. Here's a picture of me with with 3 old friends. Next to me is Akbar, the head of Gaya Celebes - the organization where I'll be staying in Makassar (it was first formed in my living room in 1993 when I first lived in Makassar). Second is Sigit, who's now very active with Gaya Nusantara, the organization here in Surabaya. Finally is Budhie, who is the current director of Gaya Nusantara and someone I've known since 1992; we've worked together many times over the years. It's great to meet so many good friends with whom I have such a history; it reminds me how Indonesia is, if not quite a second home, a place that's close to my heart.

A historic event

I got invited to attend the closing event for the Ikatan Perempuan Positif Indonesia (Indonesian Association of Positive Women), which was just created. Held in a hotel just a couple blocks from this one, there were about 50 women participating, the culmination of a couple years' planning. It was really touching to see this new organization created and run by women with or affected by HIV. It will do so much I think. I met some old friends there, including Pinky (who has been involved with women's issues for many years in Surabaya as a scholar and activist) and Jane Wilson (now with UNAIDS). When I walked in they basically stopped the proceedings and asked me and a couple other arrivals to introduce themselves, then practically gave me a standing ovation when I said what I was doing and how happy I was that the group existed - some of the women I know from earlier work but many were new faces to me. I offered to help with letters of recommendation and such and they were very interested in that - that's one of the ways I can be of help to these kinds of groups, particularly for funders who want everything in English.

Tomorrow the national HIV/AIDS conference begins - it's going to be a big day and a fun day!