Wednesday, March 24, 2010

1,000 Words About Uganda

[really interesting structural intervention!]

via Huffington Post, by Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack

When we arrived by bus at the HIV/AIDS Resource Center in Katuna, Uganda (the border between Rwanda and Uganda), twenty men were intently watching a match between Manchester United and Chelsea on a small television. Along with the pool table, board games, and additional television downstairs, soccer games provide a much needed distraction for the long-distance truckers who have to wait for their vehicles to be cleared by customs before entering Rwanda.

But just eight months ago, instead of television and camaraderie among workers, the easiest diversion for truckers was sex. Katuna is one of many towns along what is known as the Northern Transport Corridor -- a span of highway that stretches from Mombasa, Kenya through Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and all the way to Djibouti.

In the past, the truckers were often delayed for days on the border, giving them little to do. Boredom -- and drinking -- often led to unsafe sex with prostitutes at the truck stops along the highway. As a result, truck drivers have one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Africa. Unfortunately, the virus doesn't stop with them, and is often spread to their spouses.

Now, thanks to the work of the Solidarity Center, a non-profit launched by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organziations (AFL-CIO) to empower workers around the world by helping them form unions, and Uganda's Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (ATGWU), which has about 3,500 members in

Uganda, the amount of time truckers spend on the border has been reduced from days to just hours. The union has worked through bargaining with the government to reduce the amount of time it takes their paper to go through which reduced the amount of free time they have on the border.  When they don't have as much free time, they're not as likely to engage in unsafe sex. 

Read the rest.

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