Triangle of risk
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Risky behaviour among both local and foreign fishermen, truck drivers and sex workers at one of Namibia’s coastal towns could have far reaching implications, as Wezi Tjaronda reports
Walvis Bay, a harbour town more than 350 km away from Namibia’s Capital, Windhoek, depends for its economy on a major commercial fishing industry. Being on two highways, the Trans Kalahari and the Trans Caprivi, the town links directly with four African countries and has connections well beyond Namibia’s neighbouring states.
The fishing industry attracts many foreign workers from China, Russia and Spain, who arrive regularly on international fishing vessels and frequent the town during their stay. Both foreign and local fishermen, and truck drivers, engage local commercial sex workers at the harbour, sometimes sharing the same sexual partners. As a result, infections picked up along the transport route may be carried around the world to cause new infections, often with new strands of the virus.
Voices from the triangle
“These girls, I think they are helping the fishermen. We fishermen do not have enough time to find a girl that is not paid for sex. Sometimes we come in here in the morning and then you will go back in [sic] the sea in the afternoon the same day. You don’t really have time to struggle for a normal girl. That is the only option you have to be able to be with a woman.” -Local fisherman
“I use condoms when my trusted boyfriend is not giving me anything and maybe there is no soap at home and I know that there is nowhere he can get money. So I will go without telling him where or tell him I will be visiting a relative or friend. That is where I will meet men [to have sex for money] which I will have to use condoms with and when I come back to my boyfriend we will continue doing it without”. -Part-time/casual commercial sex worker
“Some of these ladies that sell themselves don’t like condoms, but for me I like condoms because many of my friends are dead because of AIDS and I do not want to follow, that’s why I use condoms.” -Truck driver
“I’m now scared because we’ve come a long time. I realised it sometimes, but I’m scared ... you got this girl there and there you are scared maybe you caught the disease”. -Truck driver not using condoms |
“Under these conditions, the implications and consequences of risky behaviour are truly international and the effects can be felt thousands of miles away,” says a study on HIV/AIDS entitled “Ships, trucks and clubs: the dynamics of HIV risk behaviour in Walvis Bay”.
The study is a summary of findings of a much larger study done for the International Organisation for Migration. It found that infections picked up elsewhere in the world may be brought to Walvis Bay and through the coastal town to other towns and neighbouring countries.
Mix of behaviours
The study found that foreign fishermen tend to reside in Namibia on board their vessels for three to six months, interspersed by short periods of leave of a couple of days on shore. These fishermen generally have low awareness and knowledge of HIV.
Many have brief sexual relations with commercial sex workers during their stay, while some may also engage in regular transactional sex with “girlfriends”, who are not really commercial sex workers but may accept occasional money, gifts, food, alcohol or a place to stay, in exchange for sex.
The girlfriends may have sex exclusively with their partners while they are on shore leave and in town, but they continue to solicit new clients when the men return to sea.
Spanish fishermen tend to engage in longer relationships, the study found, sometimes renting short term accommodation for live-in “high end” sex workers.
Chinese fishers often prefer one-off, unprotected encounters with low-end, part-time commercial sex workers, who mainly operate in their houses or solicit sex on the streets. These sex workers are usually the poorest, and therefore the least able to negotiate safe sex with their highly mobile clients.
Local fishermen and foreign and local truck drivers also engage in low-end and transactional sex, meaning that many individuals across the different groups could be encountering the same sex workers.
Education challenges
The vulnerability of foreign fishermen, according to the study, stems from a cocktail of risk factors. Coming mostly from low prevalence countries where little attention is given to HIV, they lack awareness of the disease, and cannot access the information available in Namibia due to language constraints. They then take part in high risk sexual activities with numerous unfaithful partners. Their behaviour is often influenced by alcohol abuse and their inability to communicate in any of the local languages.
Local truck drivers usually do receive HIV education, the study says, but “its impact is reduced, due to limited accessibility and unwillingness to change behaviour.” It points out the variance in the education of foreign, mostly African, truck drivers. Angolan drivers it says generally have no HIV education at all.
“Both language and accessibility problems have serious economic implications for local educators,” says the study. “They cannot hire additional staff with the required language proficiencies and hence have no means to target foreign fishermen.”
The relatively short periods of their stay in Namibia also make foreign fishermen and foreign truck drivers difficult targets for education programmes. Any understanding they do pick up while in the country leaves with them and the process has to be repeated with new arrivals.
Despite many differences in the knowledge and habits of all these groups of transport workers, they have in common an isolating, stressful and highly mobile lifestyle. As a result, most experience great difficulty in forming normal, stable relationships and many succumb to alcohol abuse.
Entertainment facilities such as shebeens, nightclubs and short-term rooms for let have developed in harbour towns like Walvis Bay specifically to serve this market of incoming fishermen and truck drivers. They provide a base for commercial sex workers, and help to perpetuate the triangle of risky behaviour.
The study suggests that this pattern of development has been largely ignored and deserves much more attention from those who run risk reducing programmes.
Ships, trucks and clubs: the dynamics of HIV risk behaviour in Walvis Bay was written by Christiaan Keulder and Debbie Le Beau, and published by the Namibian Institute for Public Policy Research. The full paper can be downloaded at: www.ippr.org.na/publications/php
Wezi Tjaronda is a senior reporter for the New Era newspaper in Windhoek, Namibia
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