Marc Silver. The interviewer asks the fresh-faced young woman named Irene: "What do you do here in this village?
Wilbur Sargunaraj, who's from India, likes to make videos about village life. He did a series, including a music video , for Goats and Soda last year. Sargunaraj went to Uganda in November to film a music video in partnership with Endiro Coffee , which donates a portion of its profits to help lift Ugandans out of poverty.
Irene lives in a fishing village in Uganda where the rate of HIV infection is 43 percent. Wilbur Sargunaraj for NPR hide caption. While he was there, a staff member with the International Organization for Migration took him on a four-hour drive to the village of Kansensero so he could make a video that would "enter into the world" of people who don't typically have a presence on YouTube.
That's where he met Irene. Irene is in her 20s and has been a prostitute for seven years. She's a little nervous at the start of the interview but goes on to give a lesson about the proper use of a condom demonstrating on a banana. She also shares her life story, which has its share of tragic moments, including a client who beat her.
But she seems remarkably resilient, talking about how she uses her earnings to take care of her two kids. She is also a peer mentor, teaching other sex workers about the importance of condoms in a village where HIV was first diagnosed in Uganda in the s. Today an estimated 43 percent of the 10, residents is HIV-positive. The man might say he'll do it, she says, but then probably won't.
