Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Cresent Societies - 19 May 2004
Rosemarie North
But now as a telephone counsellor at a new Red Cross HIV/AIDS programme in East Jakarta, Farida, 41, has had to absorb enough "bad words" to make anyone blush. She has to use the same language as callers to communicate with them, she says.
What kind of words? Farida hesitates. "Memek and ngewek," - street slang for vagina and sexual intercourse.
"They're words I never use but for the counselling I have to become comfortable with them," she says, laughing.
It's not just that certain words are off-limits in Indonesia. Talking about sex is taboo. And it's hard to give callers information about HIV/AIDS without mentioning sex. Still, Farida says it's important to get over her own shyness.
"Because I'm a teacher I don't feel so guilty talking about sex. I say to my students - who will teach our children and our community if we don't want to talk about it? So we have to talk about it."
East Jakarta Red Cross branch chairman Mr Kusnoto says a rapid rise in HIV-positive people living in the area, which is home to 2.4 million people, made him initiate the phone-counselling project, which is the first of its kind for the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI). The figure jumped from two cases in East Jakarta in 1998 to 166 in 2002.
The true picture could be much worse, says Kusnoto, because East Jakarta has a lively sex industry. It also has a transient population of people who use the area to enter the capital, a city of 10 million people.
The trend in East Jakarta is replicated throughout Indonesia. UNAIDS estimates the country has one of the fastest growing AIDS epidemics in the world. There are 90,000 to 130,000 people in Indonesia with the virus.
But intravenous drug use and commercial sex increase the transmission rate. Half of drug users in Jakarta and Denpasar (the capital of Bali) could be HIV-positive. A quarter of sex workers could be positive.
Shyness helps the disease to spread, says Kusnoto.
"Maybe people are not well-informed and they feel embarrassed to ask, so we hope phone counselling will alleviate their curiosity," he says.
Hotlines are reasonably common around the world, but relatively new to Indonesia, and the PMI has not operated any kind of hotline in the past. Along with giving factual information about the spread of the disease, the counsellors advise callers on the ABC of safer sex: abstinence, being faithful and using condoms.
The phone rings in the small office at the East Jakarta branch. Farida talks for about ten minutes to a 19-year-old who says he had unprotected sex with his girlfriend the previous Saturday and is worried about HIV. He also has sex with an old friend about once a month, he says.
After the call, Farida says she was too nervous to ask whether the friend is a man or a woman, and what kind of sex the caller has.
Trainer Agus Triwahyuono Sugeng, from HIV/AIDS organisation Yayasan Mitra Indonesia, says being comfortable talking about sex is vital for the 20 volunteers.
"The first barrier is talking about taboo things."
Hotline PMI wasn't widely promoted before its official launch in October but in the weeks beforehand, trainee counsellors answered more than 60 calls on the numbers, 862 1497 and 862 9893.
Since then, there have been up to 93 calls a month to the part-time line, most from single people younger than 30 who had heard about it from friends or relatives. Often the first question is "what is AIDS?"
About half of callers don't say a word, says Agus.
"People ring and when you pick up the call there's no answer. It's not a technical hitch," he says. "Sometimes people are too shy to talk. They're not brave enough to ask their question."
If enough people summon up the courage to use the service, East Jakarta hopes it will be a model for other parts of Indonesia.
An evaluation found the hotline had made a good start, and recommended expanding the target audience beyond the general community to include groups such as people living with HIV/AIDS, sex workers, men who have sex with men and drug users.
In future, the branch hopes to raise enough funds to buy an answering machine so that callers can get information even when the counsellors aren't available. That might put an end to silent calls and the lack of knowledge that helps spread HIV/AIDS.
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