Haitian Women

Last week I spent 3 days working in the STI clinic. So, each day I was examining patients and taking samples on patients with HIV, bacterial vaginosis, HPV, gonorrhea, etc. It was interesting. I am writing more here because I want to share what Friday was like at clinic. While I am not a “Christian” in the traditional sense of the word (one would be more accurate to label me an agnostic), most of my close family and friends are “traditional” Christians, and I think this story will shed new light on the faith/strength of the people in Haiti.

While it may be easy to view Haitians as heathens in the streets giving in to their animal desires, lacking discipline, robbing each other, etc, (and you can catch me being annoyed by the pick-pocketing and constantly being asked for money), on a deeper level you can begin to see how they were able to overthrow their French oppressors (as slaves!) and become the first black republic (and first and only nation of slaves to overthrow its owners and form its own country!). Read that again, Haiti is the only nation in the history of the world where slaves rose up and won the country. If that doesn’t tell you something about the people here, I don’t know what will.

In the clinic, so many women (maybe~ 50-75%) we saw had one partner, didn’t use a condom during sex, and their partner openly had more than one partner. It was said so nonchalantly by these women that I was appalled. They were not ashamed in the least; they accepted their husband’s promiscuity. So I stopped the patient interview and had the Dr. with me ask each woman if she knows how high-risk that makes her for all sorts of disease. The replies I got blew me away. One of the most common was, “I am a Christian, and so is my husband – he says the Bible says not to wear condoms.” I think the Dr. I work with thinks I am crazy, because I told him to ask her if she could read. She said no. And I told her the Bible says lots of things open to interpretation and debate, but I can tell her for sure that she will get disease at some point if she keeps doing what she is doing. It is sad, much like the US has done in it’s past, women are oppressed. I wish I knew what it takes to change this. I think the answer might lie in education. If we were able to explain to women things like germ theory and how disease works, at least we would have a chance. But where do you start with someone who can’t read and depends on her husband for protection and food? She isn’t exactly in a place of power, especially if she has kids to protect. Most moms I know will give their life for their children, and we see that play out here. HIV doesn’t matter, they need their husband to be around. It’s just sad that they are so devout about it. But in a weird way something is very promising about it. These women are strong.

Another common answer was “It does not matter, I am a Christian; God will protect me.” One lady said this so I told the Dr. I was with to make sure she knows that plenty of Christians get HIV because they aren’t taking care of themselves and die. She kind of hung her head and said she knew, but God is great. I asked the Dr. to explain to her that Christians file in and out of the clinic, new cases of HIV, because they didn’t use a condom and their husband was sleeping around, etc. Although scholars debate it, it is quite interesting to think what might happen if the Haitian women were more educated. What would happen? Anything? Or would they read Paul’s letters and surmise that women ARE second-class citizens? That's for you to debate. I'd rather see them read first.

It’s amazing the devotion these women have to their faith and their men. Many a night I have spent thinking about what it means to be a Haitian woman. They are quite fascinating. They are survivors.

In speaking with the Dr. I was working with after that (who is incredible), he said that it is very hard to explain to people so uneducated how disease works. The best you can do usually is that they recognize that when they see you they get cured or treated and they begin to trust you. Then you can tell them they need to use condoms. It’s interesting because some of the condom use is messed up because they don’t understand disease. They may start sex with it on then take it off, not understanding its role. We saw some young men laughing as they showed us their genital warts. The Dr. tried to explain to them how at risk they were running around having so much unprotected sex, but why listen to us? Think back to when you were 16 or 17 – were you more likely to listen to some Dr. you just met or maybe saw twice a year, or would you do what your animal instincts told you to do? Now, if you’re in the western world reading this chances are that your father was around. Let’s even pretend that your father was around and every once in awhile he messed up and cheated on your mom. But, let’s pretend he knew it was wrong and things were worked out, etc. In this case you still would probably listen to him when he told you not to have unprotected sex, etc. Now imagine you’re in Haiti, you don’t know who your dad is. The closest you have are the “men” of the neighborhood who openly sleep with all the women, and the women accept it. Not only that, but the women are devoted to these men. Why would you listen to this “Western” doctor?

One final note; I have learned quite a bit about HPV down here. As it turns out, there are over 100 strands of this virus. Most people have some strand. It’s important if you are a woman who is sexually active to get screened for HPV strands, as some are linked with cervical cancer. It’s interesting to see a previously thought "innocuous" and relatively unknown virus be so strongly linked with cancer. It makes one wonder what else is out there that we don’t quite know about or what its implications are. Yet people are biologically wired to have sex. Despite the fact that I am a male (and males are biologically wired to seek many partners), it is more and more obvious that we humans are too “smart" (or really "educated" is the correct word) to give in to this “natural, animalistic” behavior – it doesn’t fit with our growing knowledge of STIs, not to mention anything of the social sciences and stable homes. Finally, it seems that condoms aren’t always great at stopping HPV, unfortunately. (I think the story is that they do protect against HPV “getting through”, but HPV can be picked up from infected skin cells - correct me if this isn't quite right!). Sorry to upset the free-loving hippies, but traditional monogamy and committed relationships certainly seems to be the way to go when it comes to current diseases.