The third MTV I went on was to an area where a large
percentage of *sex workers live. Unfortunately,
this areas is also home to a large *shantytown where woman on hard times turn
to sex work to get by or are forced into the work by their husbands. The small homes are constructed out the
leftover building materials with walls and roofs that looked like they would
collapse with a strong breeze. To top it
all off we were parked next to a large mosque, which added to the controversy
of doing HIV tests in public.
When we pulled up we did not start setting up right
away. Instead we needed to talk to
the local police because we had forgot our permit to park there back in the
office. With HIV/AIDS being a sensitive
subject (refer to blog post “The Work” for details) we needed to make sure our
presents there was on the record. While
my boss talked to the police about it, I did my usual set up photos to show
where the MTV was that day. This time I
talked to my boss beforehand to make sure we were all on the same page as to
what I would be doing and how. Not long
after the first photo was taken, I was called over to my boss, the police
officer and a stern looking man in a suit.
Anyone seen the movie UP? He
looked the mean suit man from the movie.
“This Disney look-a-like comes with sunglass and
a cell phone”
Suit man was clearly pissed off and it was evident his anger
was directed towards me. How had I managed to
get myself in this situation again? I
hadn’t talked to or taken a single picture of a person, so I was at a loss for
what the problem was. Suit man talk to
my boss and then she passed along the message that I need to show all the
photos I had taken today to him. I had
no problem with this request, as there were a total of 5 on there, all of the
MTV. Once he saw them he looked somewhat
satisfied, but then continued to dictate orders to my boss (he was speaking in Arabic so I’m going off of his tone).
She nodded along and told him I would not be a problem. What did I do now?
Once angry suit man had walked away she told me that he
didn’t want me taking photos of the shantytown we were next to or the people
living in there. The OPALS intern explained
that the suit man was from the government (The Man) and they didn't want
foreigners coming in to take photos of anyone in poverty. Part of me agreed that we should not
exploited people in hard circumstance, but the other part of me was annoyed with
the government stepping in the way of anyone wanting to show the reality of
their country. Freedom of speech is not
a right here though, so I agreed to only shoot photos from the other sided and
not get the staggering poverty in the photos.
I did however take a photo of him when he wasn’t looking just so I could feel like I was sticking it to The Man. I
know I’m such a rebel.
Once all that was straightened out we set up the MTV and
were ready to go. We had a group of
people lined up fairly quickly and I was using my rehearsed speech in French to tell people about what we were
doing. I also had my camera and another rehearsed
speech ready to go about taking photos of participants.
Here is the basic rundown:
- Find the people who are staring confused at the MTV
- Smile a lot at them
- Approach them slowly (giving them time to run away if they want)
- Give them the speech of who we are and what we are doing
- Hand them information about HIV and testing in either Arabic or French
- Ask them if they would like to get the test (reminding them that it is quick and free)
- If yes, ask them if I could take their photo
- If yes, show them the photo afterward
- If happy with photo, tell them that the photos will be for OPALS only and will not show up on the internet
- If they said no to any of the above, smile again and say "no worries"
I’d come a long way in figuring out what group I was talking to and
best practices for each. I was successful at
getting a lot of woman to stop and get tested as well as getting photos that
didn’t piss people off. While we were in
this part of town in order to reach out to sex workers, we had a lot of men
coming from the mosque also asking for information or a test. When it comes to talking to men, I get 1 of 3
reactions. One, they look at me like
“woman, please get away” and then ignore me.
Two, they listen to me somewhat but then ask me why I’m not studying
Arabic. Three, they try hitting on me. I usually get more 1’s and 3’s no matter what
location I’m at.
After 3 MTV events with different target demographics I had
learned a lot about OPALS and the Moroccan culture. The hardest part of the MTV experience was
the lack of basic information about how the MTV works and the preparation needed
for each group. In my next blog about the work I'm doing here I will talk about the cultural differences between Western business practices
and Moroccan business practices. For now
I will say that it is a very sink or swim mentality. I’d like to think that I’m floundered under
50% and things are looking UP.
* A note on wording: in this blog entry I use the words “sex
worker” and “shantytown”. I know these
are words that can be offensive so I’d like to note that I am using the
language that is used in Morocco. In my
blog entry “The Work” I talked about how the word prostitution was not used
here and the preferred term is sex worker. The area referred to as shantytown is one of
the only words my coworkers know how to translate into English.
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