At the Gare Routière

Gares routières are an institution in the developing world. Anyone who travels outside the climatized and sanitized preordained paths of package tourism has encountered them. To many, they are a stressful and overwhelming ordeal to be avoided whenever affordable; to others, they are a great place for a bite of street food or plastic bags of homemade frozen juice, a hectic but enjoyable transit spot. Wherever they are, they resemble one another. They are full to bursting with local transit vehicles: the seven seat Peugeot station wagon, the fourteen to forty seating gutted steel vans and the occasional misplaced and well ridden European mass transit coach. When you know the gare, you know which corner contains the vehicle you seek and you can bulldog in that direction unmolested; when you do not, you will probably be physically pulled in its direction by several young men who receive the equivalent of a nickel or dime for bringing passengers to the waiting drivers.

Everywhere there is commerce. Young boys carry around flat boxes full of sucrose biscuits or cigarettes. Men of assorted age carry underwear and t-shirts, pharmaceutical drugs, sandals, toiletries, the occasional tourist artifact and whatever else one could find at a dollar store. Young women typically sell fruits, juices, plastic bags of water or nuts. They hustle from arriving van to departing car, jostling for position and shoving their products into the cramped space of travelers—most of whom, in the case of departing cars, feign disinterest until the car is literally pulling out, at which time they can bargain most effectively with the running girls. The girls are rarely over eighteen, since older women at the gare tend to serve full meals, seated behind the safety of a table. The girls spend all day on their feet to earn, in Mali at least, about $1.50 per day—arguably enough to eat, certainly not enough to enjoy being a girl. As a result, many of these young female vendors supplement their income by sleeping with transit drivers (an entirely male population that is comparatively well heeled and sex deprived). The teenagers can earn a couple of dollars with their exertion.

These girls belong in the oft spoken of, oft lamented and largely inaccessible category of people that NGOs and governments refer to as "high risk"; but, they are distinct from the other bearers of this title like full time sex workers and long haul drivers by their age and vulnerability. AMPRODE/SAHEL is a democratic Malian organization, conceived of and operated by Malians, that works to tackle issues related to health, education and the environment. It has been in operation for more than a decade and has received funding and assistance at various times from various NGOs. It currently enjoys the patronage of Population Services International—a USAID funded behemoth with a self-explanatory name.

Baboucar Traore and Ada Sowe are trying to connect the resources of these organizations to the problems of the young women at the gare routière. Both of these social workers are Malians in their middle age, well educated, articulate and compassionate; both have considerable experience working with AIDS and other social issues. Mr. Traore shed some additional light on the situation of the young women in question. He said that they are answerable to a "patron" who receives the bulk of their profit in return for allowing them to spend twelve to fourteen hours on their feet selling his or her wares. Nearly all of them have dropped out of school because their families cannot afford the fees or because their families have insisted that they support themselves. Amongst the destitute this situation is not unusual; even when a West African government extends free education to young girls, it rarely, if ever, provides the necessary books, uniforms and learning materials, the cost of which renders the education unaffordable for millions of families.

One of the greatest obstacles to helping these young women is that they are so difficult to reach. They cannot be taught about sexual self-protection at school, they are not informed by their families and they cannot be found together anywhere aside from the gare, where their constant and vigorous work is the necessary condition of their eating any food at all. For the most part they also lack the confidence, experience and attitude of professional sex workers, who are more comfortable insisting on the use of contraceptives and more aware of why they should do so. (Mr. Traore is proud of and encouraged by this insistence, since it represents a significant and recent change, proving that high risk populations can be reached and assisted).

TV advertisements are unlikely to reach the vending girls; radio is better but still no guarantee; and in the Sevare region, as in many others, the interventions or animations that are carried out directly in villages are too infrequent, leaving many to slip through the cracks. Mr. Traore and Ms. Sowe have been contacting the patrons of the vending girls at the two major gares in their region in order to arrange times when they can speak with the girls in person. Their current model involves receiving permission from the patron to sensitize his workers, and then offering the girls each one thousand CFA ($1.50) to forego a day's work for a prolonged session on sexual health and safety. At the pilot sensitizations, attendance was good and the feeling was positive. The girls were willing to ask questions and seemed receptive to the teaching of AMPRODE/SAHEL's workers. Mr. Traore and Ms. Sowe use all of the materials at their disposal to drive their message home, including demonstration mannequins and distribution of printed materials. It is still to early to say whether or not they have changed the sexual practice of the workers.

While their approach is well conceived, promising, and laudable, they mention predictable setbacks. There are scores of gares in Mali alone, and the necessary expense of paying the girls to attend makes the interventions costly, too much so for a small organization to perform them as frequently as they would like. Mr. Traore and Ms. Sowe are also the only two workers currently using these methods.

Many who work on AIDS in Mali are still convinced that Malians will not ever change their attitudes towards sex, but Mr. Traore stated optimistically, "I am sure the mentality will change." His experiences with direct communication have convinced him that NGOs that spend vast sums to broadcast their messages over television and radio would be wiser to send workers door to door—all of the doors. In a country with labor costs as low as Mali's, this could be accomplished with the same amount of money.


AIDS Testing in Mali: A First Hand Experience
Targeting women to contain HIV/AIDS in Mali