The CDC Story

I woke up the other morning understanding that we would be going to a “bar” to meet the “waitresses”. A prostitute house essentially. It is illegal here but I don’t think anyone really cares too much that they are still running. I think they have resolved just to allow it but regulate it to a certain extent. How can you close them down when the people who would be able to close them down are the main customers? At 1:30 we started our trek to the CDC… that’s what they call it in Chinese too! A change of plans… not to uncommon here. In a nice conference room on the top floor of the very nice CDC building we sat down in nice chairs around a huge table. People started filing in and we were left to guess who was who. We finally understood that the man at the head of the table was the director of the CDC. The students we went with were presenting a project proposal. I don’t fully understand how the cooperation is supposed to work or who initiated the project but the initial meeting was a success apparently. We sat there while there was an animated discussion about the project and how it would be carried out. Connie leaned over at one point and tried to help me understand what was going on. The six women and one man that sat across from us were the owners of these “bars”. The project was to initiate a peer education program with the waitresses. But the challenges were that the waitresses are undereducated, from different areas in China or even other countries, and are very young! The graduate students are going to be training some of the older waitresses who have been around a while to talk about healthier life styles to eventually talk about AIDS to the younger waitresses. It is a three year project and it will be interesting to know more about this project.

After the meeting, three of the men stood together discussing something and lit up their cigarettes! At least two of them were employees of the CDC. I ate my watermelon.

Later I wondered if we would ever have the director of the CDC, students from the public health school, and owners of prostitute houses all in the same room in the U.S. having a conversation about AIDS prevention?