The big day has come and gone. Five hours of meeting with the cooperative of female sex workers (FSW) my partner John has been working with for three years. And we are agreed that we all are going to take the next steps forward.
As I expected there was a lot of defensiveness. Why wouldn't there be? Who was this strange person, coming from another country with this claim that he could create an exit for these women from their current situation. We got off to a late start as many came late, really late. There is this concept called 'Ghana-man-time' which is pretty much the same as 'manana' in the Latin American cultures. But despite that, we had a qurom and were able to get started.
I have found with defensive audiences that it pays to tell the warts of one's own story first to gain trust. This was surely the case today. Relating a number of the painful challenges of my past, was a key to getting the wome to become open. Then I developed a (what I thought was a) cool way of engaging in conversations. I cut up colored paper so they had squares of three colors. One stood for "you just used a world I don't understand". Another was for "You just insulted me or hurt my feelings." The last was, "I don't understand the whole last concecpt you were talking about."
Happily, I had none of the 'hurt feelings' cards, only a few of the 'too big word cards' (mostly because I was very proactive in asking them if they understood things, but quite a few of the 'not undersand concept' cards which insured we had good dialog and clarified important misunderstandings.
Ultimately the six women were all in agreement that this was worth giving a shot. They had been realistic about the amount of money they needed go give up sex work. And we were able discuss what we (the ladies and we sponsors) expected of each other. As one of the ladies has a good degree of business education, she was charged with designing a little contract of mutual expectations between us. The major work of raising money now looms. Step-by-step we progress.
4 comments:
Just read the last three posts. What an interesting and exciting adventure. I like that you were starting to feel at home, since you had been there before.
I really like the idea of the colored paper signals. I'm going to think about how I can steal the idea and use it. For example, I'll be leading a discussion on research on sexual harassment soon, and this could be a really useful technique.
yes I also think that's a great idea. Good progress!
Yes, one step at a time! So interesting to read how you were able to communicate so well with these women! Great progress!
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