Personal Narrative: My Interview With A Wahehe Sex Worker

Claire E. Sterk 's article Tricking and Tripping: Fieldwork on Prostitution in Era of AIDS ' published by Social Change Press in 2000 takes into account the patterns and procedures that anthropologists take into practice during fieldwork. She provides some useful insights and learnt lessons during her studies with prostitutes. She also provides a close and intimate account of their lives and mental state in their own words. Her findings are substantiated with proper examples in the accounts of the daily lives of these women. Unlike most student’s expectation of fieldwork as a leisure activity at some serene place, Sterk observes the pain associated with the lifestyle and brings into light some important patterns and procedures that anthropologists must consider while interviewing a research group.

“I have spent the last four years watching people die.” In his 2005 Massey Lectures, Stephen Lewis, a Canadian politician and humanitarian, caught the attention of millions with these words. Within these lectures, he shared his experiences of watching Africans suffer through the AIDS pandemic, and critically examined how the neglect of global communities and their discrimination contributed to its failure to resolve. While the rest of the world seemed to be unresponsive to an AIDS-ravaged continent, Mr. Lewis found himself passionately involved in the crisis and began to take action. Since his involvement with the United Nations in 1984, Stephen Lewis has tirelessly advocated for African citizens affected by HIV and AIDS, ensured that health care and treatment is provided to victims, and reached out to African citizens with education and counseling through his organizations. Through all of this, Stephen Lewis has proven to be one of Canada’s most influential humanitarian advocates for impacting the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Africa.

In the anthropological fieldwork, it is courteous and almost always mandatory to gain formal consent from the individuals the research is conducted about. Although at times it may be awkward and uncomfortable, researchers like Claire Sterk must ask for consent to help protect the subject, the university, and themselves. Yet, the process of building trust and relationships in a field like dangerous strolls and crack houses can be difficult to an outsider, especially one with a higher economic status and different racial and cultural background. Sterk faced each of these obstacles as she pursued her research into understanding the life of female prostitutes from their own point of view.

A Heart for the Work: Journeys Through an African Medical School by Claire L. Wendland is both an first hand account of time spent in an African medical school and hospital as well as a critique on Western medical practices. Dr. Wendland, an accomplished anthropologist and physician, provides a first hand account of her time in a Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. Through this account she provides insight into the complete journey a student must take to become a doctor in conditions much different than our own. These insights and research are used to argue that medicine, or biomedicine as it is called, is part of a cultural system and is predicated on the cultural ideals and resources of developed nations. Wendland uses the differences in moral order, technology, and resources between the Malawian culture and our own culture to provide evidence for her main argument.

Human trafficking has received increasing global attention over the past decade. Trafficking of women and girls for forced sex work and, to a lesser extent, domestic servitude, were the sole focus of advocacy and assistance. There is recognition in today’s society that women, children, and men are trafficked into many different forms of labour, and for sexual exploitation. In her article, “Understanding and Addressing Violence Against Women”, Cathy Zimmerman and Heidi Stockl focus on the commonality of human trafficking and how evident it is in everyday life. They bring in the health effects and possible solutions to human trafficking to help validate their opinion and argument. In the solutions they offer, Zimmerman and Stockl shine a light on policy-makers/decision-makers, health-care providers, and researchers/funders and what each of these groups of people can do to help combat the issue of human trafficking. In a quote from their article, Stockl and Zimmerman say: “Health care providers and organizations involved with trafficked persons should increase their capacity to identify and refer people in trafficking situations and provide sensitive and safe services to people post-trafficking”. This quote shows how Zimmerman and Stockl believe human trafficking should be combated by caring and talking to those affected by the issue but how they also believe awareness should be made about human trafficking so as to allow people surrounding the issue to identify and help victims of this issue. Zimmerman and Stockl’s view on the ways human trafficking should be combatted relate to those of Soroptimist due to the fact that the two groups of people are focused mainly on helping women and girls who have been trafficked and trying to get them to a better life after getting out of the trafficking situation. Both groups focus on helping men as well, providing options to help them such as raising money and awareness, and getting educated on being able to identify victims of human trafficking.

is entitled: Radical Professionals? Sex Worker Rights Activists and Collaboration with Human Service Nonprofits. This article explains partnerships amongst agencies providing “underground” services defined as associations supplying unwarranted assistance to groups of people participating in unlawful behavior (Anasti, 2016).

She explains how human trafficking is more than sexual acts. It is also sweatshop work, organ transplants, and agricultural. Most women did not look like they do in the media: beaten, bruised, and with a black eye. She said this trip was a very humbling experience. She had to build trust with the people there, especially because she was different than them. Human trafficking is looked at in many ways; for example, globalization, economics, gender, human rights, and organized crime. On one of her trips in 2011 she collected women’s stories. Many women live in poverty but that does not mean that they were all trafficked. One quote that really stands out from her is “We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process to change the world…” . Sister Angela Reed’s speech reflected Mercy Week’s theme of Make Mercy Real because she talked about how we as students can make a difference, or show mercy to those in need. Although I only went to two events, they all correlate with each other because of the theme, make mercy

Growing up in a refugee settlement and later in a low-income immigrant family with limited access to healthcare, I understand the importance of addressing the socioeconomic disparities in health. Whether it is organizing workshops on hygiene for Tibetan refugees in rural India or providing HIV testing and counseling to the local Asian LGBT community in the Twin Cities, I am driven to improve the health of vulnerable populations. In addition to the excellent medical education and early clinical exposure, what really draws me to Geisel School of Medicine is the Urban Health Scholars Program (UHS). As an Urban Health scholar, I look forward to exploring the intersection of race, refugee or immigrant status, LGBT identity and health. Given my strong

As I am not able to attend an event, training, meeting, or conference dealing with human trafficking, due to my schedule, and my children schedule, I choose to take the extra credit of finding a local anti-trafficking collation/organization.

Jessica was very open to the idea of speaking with the researcher. She illustrated that “prostituting was a life she could never have imagined. It was a world so dark that not even the smallest light could penetrate it” (Personal Communication, November 21, 2015). She disclosed that she was raised in Monterey, California, and was the oldest of three children. She reported that she came from a middle class family. She felt that her physical needs were met, but that her emotional needs were not met. She considered herself an “outcast in high school”. She was loved theater, and was also involved in band. She had graduated high school with decent grades, and had been accepted to San Luis Obispo. After she graduated from San Luis Obispo, she applied to graduate school at Arizona State University. She was accepted, and moved to Arizona immediately hoping to obtain residency.

While many may perceive the problems with slavery and refugees to reside specifically in underdeveloped, Third World Countries, Nazer’s story displays how ethical problems, such as slavery, reside in global powers as well. Alison Jaggar expresses the necessary elimination of the assumptive societal viewpoint of these problems in her work, “‘Saving Amina’: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue”. Jaggar stresses that it is necessary to realize that Third World poverty, “… cannot be attributed exclusively to the injustice of… local cultures,” and that many people in these countries, “are oppressed by global forces” (Jaggar 62 & 67). Omer’s utter disbelief once he, “… discovered the full truth about,” Nazer not being paid for her service depicts how many people the ignorance that many people in countries, such a England, have towards problems within their own countries (Nazer 296). Both Nazer and Jaggar speak, through their works, directly to, “… those in the West,” that, as Nazer puts it, “often take their freedom for granted” (311). At the same time, though, both stress the importance of creating an, “… intercultural dialogue about global justice,” and ensuring that those in power understand their own moral and ethical problems just as much as those in Third World countries (Jaggar

The “Global Health Ethics for Students” reading provides different important points. What I would emphasize from this reading is that the case example must be read first, followed by the introduction and different sections of the paper. At the end, the reader must understand the case resolution and reasons why the medical student in this example decided to learn more about global health work before going to work to South Africa. The main principles discussed in this reading are humility, introspection, solidarity and social justice. How these need to be present in a medical student volunteering abroad, and how all global clinical and research health work must follow the idea of: think action, think local and think long term, for the sake of the trainee and of the patients.

In a peer-reviewed article by Laura R. Murraya , Sheri A. Lippman, Angela A. Doninid and Deanna Kerrigane, ‘She’s a professional like anyone else’: social identity among Brazilian sex workers’, goes on to explain the narratives of seven women in Brazil who are most active in community sex work activities that improving individual status while also maintaining an identity as a sex worker was viewed as being nearly impossible without efforts to change the basis on which their status as sex workers was constructed. The several women decided to create a non-governmental organization (NGO) in an effort to address a powerful testament to the necessity of quality and accessible health services and to the central role of a clinic space built on respect and non-discrimination. In the early stages of the organization, the president of the organization described the group, within the context of a focus group, as quoted, “It is a small group. A group of sex workers together with the community, we don’t want to lose

Because in many developing countries, there are all too often issues with women’s rights and negligence in women’s health, they are also striving to specifically provide women’s health care to those who are pregnant or who have been sexually abused. Just this year, Medecins Sans Frontiers notes one of their major accomplishments to be treating over 100 individuals for sexual assault after two instances of mass rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo by militias.

The modern world today is proud to recognize the equality that has been acknowledged between age, gender, and race. Women are beginning to be treated as equals with men, in new customs, lifestyle, society, and economy. Today, women are freer and are liberated from their traditional roles as housewives, and are pursuing their hopes and dreams. However, this is not the case in many regions of the world. In the developing countries, thousands of females are dehumanized by prostitution and the trafficking of women and children is dehumanizing which serves only to benefit men. It exploits and violates the rights of women in the developing world. Sexual exploitation, which includes sex tourism,