Another Reason for a Militant Global Women's Rights Movement

An excerpt from the NY Times article "Truck Stop Girls" by By M. CATHERINE MATERNOWSKA:

I met eyes with a 16-year-old named Mbali. She was thin, with close-cropped hair and a beautiful smile. I offered her a packet of crackers, which she ripped open with her teeth. After wolfing them down, she looked at me and said, “I hate having sex.” Her parents were dead; she was unable to pay her school fees, had been abused by an overburdened aunt — and now, like many of the girls, she was a runaway. Nearly one in four Swazi girls is H.I.V. positive, and Mbali is one of them. Her treatment options are limited. “I have nowhere to sleep unless I find a man,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t have money and food for two days. A man without a condom will pay more, so obviously I say O.K. because I need money.”

She continued: “I am so tired. These men are so rough.”

I’ve been working with women and girls for over two decades now — in Haiti, in Zimbabwe, in Tanzania and in Kenya — and I have heard this story often. But this one, deep in the forest of Swaziland, seemed so desperate. I was as surprised as she was when I suddenly burst into tears.

Mbali held my face and said, “Don’t cry!” She hugged me. How absurd can life be? A 16-year-old, H.I.V.-positive orphan was comforting me while I wept. It was a strange way to carry on an interview, but that’s what we did. I asked her what she needed most. “Someplace safe,” she said. “Someplace to be a girl. Someplace where I won’t have to have sex with men anymore.”

The driver of our car appeared, carrying takeout food from a nearby bar. I could hear trucks speeding along the highway through the forest. I kept thinking about what Mbali asked for: a safe place to be a girl. How strange. How simple.