Fallen Leaves

Fallen leaves.


I met a girl, who is an active volunteer with the Malaysian AIDS Council, at MAC last year while I was doing my research there.
[I still remember I had to breathe in the stench of cat poo in the small MAC library at that time].

Ahh but anyway, the girl I met had mentioned about Fallen Leaves when I told her I was attached to one of the NGOs in the research I was helping out with.

I had no clue about what the performance would be like / was, until I volunteered in one of the projects was I given the privilege to watch Fallen Leaves perform in Sekolah Tunas Bakti during World AIDS Day last year.

The video above depicts the beginning of a rather lengthy but meaningful play.

The opening was composed of a combination of, well, several "slogans" that we would normally hear as we visit Petaling street / Puduraya bus station / Chinatown.

"Batu Pahat, Batu Pahat, JB, JB, JB, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Ipoh, Ipoh, Ipoh"

...anyone who had been to Puduraya would recognise that the clip above shared similarities with how "runners" try to get bus passengers as they walk past the former.
Whenever I walked past the counters to the Plaza Rakyat LRT station, I always had the dejavu of being back to the moment I saw the play.

The actors in this play are recovering drug users and also some living with HIV. The stories presented are real life stories, those of their personal experiences.

Perhaps because these were personal experiences, they had successfully touched the hearts of the participants in the Sekolah Tunas Bakti that we went to during the event.

Those were real stories - with a beginning filled with temptation coupled with an ending with a good and clear message about the consequences to the actions done previously.

I remember clearly there was one story about a young school boy and drug use, another about a curious man patronising a sex worker (without using a condom).

There were people trying to earn a little by "guarding" parking lots, one who was selling "viagra" pills and other traditional herbs to improve masculinity, even pimps that ask you in for a nice sex session!

Very much what I had seen as I walked through the back alleys that house the rather many "brothels" (or well, dens).

The most important message I thought the play had brought up was to strip themselves off the stigma and discrimination that others would toss on to them for their past and go on leading a life that is meaningful (all in their own contexts). With the advancement of better anti-retroviral drug regimens, now a person living with HIV, with good compliance and a healthy lifestyle could life up to 15 years.

Family

Family.
This is a video on family, directed by Yasmin Ahmad for the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS), Singapore.


It speaks of family bonding, its importance and values.

Well, (as usual) it got tears gathering in my tear ducts.
Family bonding.
A special bond that I have shared with my family, one that (I suppose) I (had always thought, I) am lucky to be gifted with.

One that I, too, wished my life partner would appreciate as much as I do.

"In the end, it's these small things that you remember...little imperfections that make them perfect, for you. So to my children, I hope that you will find yourselves life partners, who are as beautifully imperfect, as your father was, to me."

There are also, conversely, materialistic girls / women who enjoy a relationship that would shower them with iPods, iPhones, Apple computers, Gucci bags, LV purse, expensive make-ups and so on.

I believe firmly that how a partner reacts when one faces difficulties or hardships, even mistakes, perhaps is a good determination to how good a partner he or she can be.

That is what the builds a family.

Drug users and snatch thefts

Recently, there had been a surge in cases of snatch thefts. I was particularly saddened by the case that had occured two days before, on two youngsters who were high on morphine who had killed a lady, her son and a maid.

[And I thought morphine was uncommon among local drug users!]

Anyway...
I remember last December when I was scouting for female sex workers on the street for a research I was helping out, I met an ex-prison officer from Melaka. It was midnight as he took me and Doc to a midnight tour around the town to look for sex workers.

He told us an interesting "prediction" of his.

He said that from a social point of view, Malaysia will not feel the (social) impact of the economic downturn that had hit us late last year until this year (2009).

Now I do not stigmatise or discriminate people just because they are drug users or sex workers, or in this case, any of the groups often despised by (a great majority of) the public. But the ex-prison officer told me that he worked with many drug users and he knew that the economic downturn will make life even more difficult for them.

Difficult in the sense that there would be less odd jobs being offered, more retrenchment, the price of drugs may even surge along with a reduction in supply.

They will (or may, rather) resort in commiting petty crimes, like snatch thefts; especially when they are in need of monies to get their drug supplies.

One of the difficult things that constitutes the process of getting off drug addiction (or drug use) is the pain that one feels during withdrawal. This was a comment made by an officer involved in counselling drug users that I had met.

I thought that it would be impractical to expect the police to boost up measures to reduce petty crimes because there is already (as I see with my naked, without-make-up eyes!) that there are a gazillion dozens of youngsters out there, who are (already) caught in the entanglements of the living-on-the-street culture.

Since he left home, he has been in and out of trouble, the result of living on the streets and sleeping in the back alleys of Kuala Lumpur. Invariably, life on the streets like an urchin turned him into what he is today.

This is a quote that I had read on Raja Petra's blog, an entry about his sincere apology to the nation on the news about his son's recent act. I respect him for his stand in upholding what he preaches and sincerely felt that this apology is unnecessary.

Back to the story, it is only feasible that we ourselves can take practical measures in ensuring our safety; simply things like holding a pepper spray (or the secret code "Pep-see" as my dad would call it) when we walk on dark or deserted alleys (if we really cannot avoid it); locking the car right after getting into it; be alert of whether a motorcycle is trailing us (from the rear mirror) as we are driving and so on.

I had experienced many false alarms due to my serious concern about safety, as I travel or move around alone when Doc is not around, the adrenaline had not halted my obsession in taking precautions to ensure me, my friends' and families' safety at all times.

It is scary, really.

Of Tooth brush and Razors

"Injecting drug use with shared syringes and handmade tools is a disaster in prisons. In addition, tattooing with common equipments, sharing shavers and sometimes tooth brush are the other methods of HIV transmission".

"To solve the problem, replacement therapies with agonist substances such as methadone and Buprenorphine, distribution of syringes needles and bleach (only for tattoo) and providing shaver and tooth-brash as health share of prisoners can reduce common use of mentioned tools and equipments".

Not so long ago, I had attended the Iran-Malaysia Joint Seminar on HIV and AIDS as a participant. It was my first time being in a joint conferences and there were many eye opening discoveries, especially interventions and policies regarding HIV prevention, care and support both in Iran and Malaysia.

One of the eye opening discoveries include this slide presented by a professor from Iran. This was a plenary session on Prison and the measures done to reduce health risks associated harm in prisoners.

The speaker had stated that the sharing of toothbrush and razors can transmitted HIV.

...to my utter surprise!

Perhaps they should go back to the basics or better still, check their facts here (and Spelling! If you noticed the 2nd Brush was spelled as "Brash")
(since this is afterall a national level seminar).

For transmission to occur,
Fact No. 1: HIV must be in bodily fluid or blood (Not in the dry-and-already-being-coagulated-by-protein form because the virus cannot survive in the air)

Fact No. 2: A person who has the virus, has to have a cut / open wound with enough blood or bodily fluid (for example semen or vaginal fluid) (in liquid form)

Fact No. 3: The person who is about to be infected has to also have an entry point (bodily fluid / open wound)

Three of the above conditions have to occur at the same time for transmission to occur

I had learnt that the main modes of transmission for HIV are:

1) Via sexual intercourse with a person who is already infected with HIV, being Vaginal, Anal (high risk) and/or Oral (low risk) sex;
2) Sharing of needles with a person infected with HIV;
3) Blood transfussion from a person infected with HIV (to a less extend nowadays);
4) Mother-to-child transmission; and /or
5) From the breast milk of an infected mother to a child.

Two face?

Source: The Fire Wire

One side says that we "do not" stigmatise nor discriminate people living with HIV;
the other says that we should take all possible precautions in the whole wide world to prevent HIV transmission, as if people living with HIV are diseased people who can spread the virus anytime they wanted!

Talk about being activists and "saviour" of the mankind.

Obstetric fistula

Obstetric fistula is a gynaecological condition whereby prolonged labour without prompt medical treatment leads to the formation of a hole in the birth canal, often resulting in severe incontinence and a stillborn baby.

Maternal mortality is fueled by gender inequality and discrimination towards women, especially in under-developed or developing countries. One of the main reasons to high maternal mortality rate is the denial to prompt medical treatment. The same reason is also the cause of obstetric fistula, that leaves a woman with the smell of leaking urine and faeces.

There are many reasons to why there are activists out there who fight for gender equality (or even to "near" equality) ; if only a husband would put down his ego and try a little more to love and to make the correct decision, than to deny a women from what actually constitutes her rights.

I saw this video on the United Nations Population Fund website to "End Fistula".

Do we lose something in life, in order to gain something else?

...like losing freedom of speech over a dictator's command or anger towards the truth that is expressed (through speech) - to build a nation filled with dreams (instead of one based on harsh truth);
...like a child's silence to the violence that her / his superior(s) is / are exerting to the former - for being a minor;
...or a husband's worry about providing enough food on the table over having to perform dangerous jobs;
...or a wife's pain, inflicted by her husband's violence and anger, over her "living happily ever after" dream or hope that the marriage will improve.


Freedom of speech: will it come to a point when we will neither speak nor sing again for what we believe is true, like we were mute, if everything said (seem to be) untrue?

To blog or not to blog, that is the question

It seems that blogging has became (possibly a big) part of the political culture in Malaysia, besides a good source for local food hunting.

The possibility that newspapers will have to quote blogs as a source of news reports in the future amuses me - I thought so, after reading this news article on Hannah Yeoh's encounter with a few person who had tried to attack her while she was driving alone on The Star Online and Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat's statement on his blog regarding a comment that Tan Sri Muyhiddin Yassin had made about him. These two politicians (alongside the prime minister, ex-prime minister Tun Dr. Mahathir and a great deal of other politicians) blogged about the incident / press release / statements online, which the conventional press then quotes.

Freedom of speech and control of blog contents would probably be the next in line to be monitored, I presume?