The Work

Alright, enough with all this fun stuff I’m doing, on to the reason why I’m here – the work! I started writing this blog post about where I work and what I do but I soon realized that it was about three times as long as any previous post and I wasn’t finished.  I’ve decided to break it up into three different posts so you all won’t become overwhelmed with my epically long blog post (how Peter Jackson of me to break one story up into three).  This first post will be about where I work.

I work at the Pan-African Organization to Combat AIDS, that goes by OPALS Maroc.   OPALS is a non-profit organization with its headquarters located in Rabat, Morocco (this is where I live in case you forgot).  Attached to their headquarters is a woman’s clinic that offers HIV testing, gynecological services, physical therapy and a general physician.  OPALS is one of the most active organizations in Morocco working to stem the tide of AIDS.  It operates 17 drop-in clinics that provide health services, access to condoms and HIV screening. Representatives from OPALS even go door to door in remote areas to offer HIV-screening and spread the word about the risks of HIV. 

OPALS main targets for their educational programs and testing are young people, sex workers (the word prostitute is not used here), immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, and people in hard-to-reach locations.  The other part of the population that they reach out to is married women.  This surprised me as I thought the risk of HIV infection would be low for this group.  What I learned is that there are many reasons, both cultural and otherwise, that married women are especially vulnerable to getting infected. 

One example I heard was of a married woman who suspected her husband of having relations with a sex worker and was therefore worried about getting infected.  She brought this up to her husband and asked him to wear a condom.  He refused and denied any extra marital relations.  Because condoms are mostly associated with sex workers, it is hard for woman to insist in his wearing a condom as it is considered to “undermine the trust of the relationship”.  There is some legal protection for woman with the law that grants woman the right to divorce her husband if he is HIV-positive.  If threatening divorce doesn’t help thought, she can end the marriage by other means.  However, there are a whole host of other taboos and controversies that come from getting a divorce and make it harder for a woman. 

One of the biggest issues is the stigma attached to condoms and sex education.  The main obstacles to condom use in Morocco are cultural, psychological and financial, since condoms usually are not free and are not readily available in public settings.  If a woman went into a pharmacy to get condoms they would assume she was a sex worker.  Talking about sex with ones partner or in school is taboo for woman and young girls are made to believe that it is a “dirty” topic. 

The stigma attached to AIDS is such a great barrier in Morocco that people will not visit a clinic that openly offers only AIDS treatment and prevention, such as giving away free condoms. OPALS therefore provides general medical services as well as AIDS-related services in its centers as to not stigmatized them.  They don’t even advertise that the clinic offers treatment and testing for AIDS.  This makes for a safe space for people to come and ask questions about their health and get male and female condoms for free.

OPALS is working to change these attitudes through awareness-raising and public information campaigns.  OPALS has a mobile testing van that travels around to offer up information about safe sex and free rapid HIV testing.  They also partner with local hospitals and international research organizations to do studies on the use of contraception with sex workers and the statistics of how many people are getting tested each year.   

That’s all I got for now about this interesting and multifaceted organization.  I will write again about the work I’ve been doing and the observations I have on the work OPALS does.  Stay tuned!