Inter Press Service - September 30, 1999
Richel Dursin

But clients who take his motorcycle taxi get not just a ride around town, but expert lessons about HIV and AIDS as well.

The lesson usually starts when passengers ask driver Nurjaya, 34, about the message printed on the back of his dark blue jacket, which says "Wherever I go, I am aware of AIDS."

According to ojek drivers, passengers often ask about how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is spread, about the people in their community who live with the disease. They also wonder if the ojek drivers are not afraid of ferrying clients living with HIV/AIDS.

"HIV is not spread by talking to AIDS victims. It is transmitted through sexual intercourse, blood transfusions or when a pregnant woman passes the virus to her unborn or newborn breast- fed child," says Nurjaya.

He learned this information, which he shares with passengers, from training seminars organised by the non-governmental Yayasan Pelita Ilmu (Pelita Ilmu Foundation) to help make people aware about HIV/AIDS at a local level.

The foundation issued the jackets to ojek drivers and gave them materials about HIV/AIDS to carry along.

Like many other Indonesians, Nurjaya did not always know or understand the facts about the pandemic. In fact, before he attended the foundation's seminar, he was advised by his wife, Nurjanah, not to take people with AIDS as passengers because he might get sick as well.

Standing in a makeshift shed, Nurjaya now asserts that the residents of Tebet, a sub-district in South Jakarta where he plies his route, now understand people living with AIDS.

"Residents of this community are no longer scared of people with AIDS and this makes me happy," says Nurjaya, one of 50 ojek drivers trained by Yayasan Pelita Ilmu on HIV/AIDS information.

With funding support from the Ford Foundation, YPI began conducting training for ojek drivers plying Tebet in 1996. The 10- year-old YPI also runs a community support centre in Asem Baris Raya for people living with AIDS known as "Sanggar Kerja" or temporary shelter.

YPI thought of using the ojek drivers as AIDS campaigners in 1996, when some people with AIDS staying in its community support centre complained that ojek drivers refused to take them as passengers.

"I didn't want to bring the AIDS victims home for fear that I might get infected with HIV," admits 41-year-old Supardi, another ojek driver.

But with ojek drivers as AIDS campaigners, the attitude of Tebet residents changed from rejection to acceptance of people with AIDS. These drivers were able to help spread information about HIV/AIDS prevention, including the problems faced by people with AIDS.

"The ojek drivers are effective AIDS campaigners because they are very close to the community, especially to the low-income group," YPI programme manager Husein Habsyi says.

Besides, ojek drivers are mobile and work from dawn to midnight. In a day, they have at least 20 passengers.

But there were other problems. Nurjaya recalls that some residents of Tebet at first refused to ride his motorcycle when they knew that someone with HIV/AIDS had just ridden with him.

That, however, was often the occasion that allowed he and other drivers to stress that HIV is not transmitted by touch. More information then follows, ranging from how condom use is the final step in HIV prevention -- they explain that the first step is avoiding multiple sex partners and the second is being faithful to one's partner after marriage.

Ojek drivers also help YPI in the delivery of medicines, such as anti-retroviral drugs, for AIDS patients.

From April 1987 up to August this year, a total of 253 AIDS and 680 HIV cases were reported to the Indonesian Ministry of Health. Of these figures, the highest number of reported cases totalling 258 come from densely populated Jakarta, followed by Irian Jaya province, with 243 cases; and Riau, 110 cases. A total of 118 Indonesians have died because of AIDS.

High levels of migrant populations -- foreign fishermen in Irian and visitors to Batam island in Riau -- are a major factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.

Over the years, the number of AIDS and HIV-infected cases has been increasing in Indonesia, where the need of the men to have partners is often stronger than their religion, and ignorance about AIDS remains widespread.

"I hope that people would get rid of their negative thinking about AIDS," says 33-year-old Ayung Almin, a former bank employee living in AIDS and now staying in Sanggar Kerja.

His illness, he says, has left him shunned by his parents when they learned in September 1995 that he had HIV.

Unlike other people with HIV, Ayung freely talks about his plight and confesses he got the virus from unprotected sex. About 80 percent of the Indonesians living with AIDS got the HIV virus through sexual intercourse.

"I had different partners," recounts Ayung, who now works as a coordinator for YPI. He has been invited by the Ford Foundation to speak at the Fifth International Congress on AIDS in Asia- Pacific, to be held in late October in Malaysia.

Dr George Loth, senior country programme adviser of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, points out that discrimination against people with AIDS still exists in Indonesia because of ignorance.

In fact, he says, "many doctors don't want to report AIDS cases because they don't want the AIDS patients to suffer from social discrimination." In Indonesia, people with HIV/AIDs coming from low and middle- income groups are more open to talk about their plight than those belonging to the upper class, who want to protect their "reputation" and the business interests of their families.

It was to help curb discrimination against those with AIDS that YPI put up its community centre. Sanggar Kerja, where people with AIDS are offered accommodation for at least a week, now serves as a model home for people with AIDS.

The foundation, according to YPI's Husein, put up the centre five years ago because "AIDS patients need not only medical treatment, but also social and moral support".

But now that Tebet residents are quite aware about HIV/AIDS, Nurjaya, Supardi and other ojek drivers long for the days when they had to give many more lengthy 'lessons' about the illness.

"I would be very willing to talk about AIDS if there is someone who wanted to know about it," says Nurjaya, putting on his now- faded blue jacket. (END/IPS/ap-he-hd/rd/js/99)
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