Finding Community, Common Cause, and a Happy Life at Shusta Jibon

SEPTEMBER 2009—Pahari was born in 1957 as a male and went by the name Nazrul. At age 10, she started to realize that she did not feel like a boy: she loved to dress in women’s clothes and behaved like a female. Her classmates and relatives did not accept this change. They often harassed her and sometimes beat her, and she was depressed and lonely.

Because she felt like an outcast, she did not pursue further studies after she finished two years of college. She managed to get a job as a cook in a Pakistani Army Camp during the Bangladesh Liberation War, but experienced sexual abuse from soldiers who threatened to kill her if she did not have sex with them.

After the war, she didn’t know what else to do to make a living and began selling sex on the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. At the time, Pahari had very little awareness of the risks she was taking for contracting HIV or another sexually transmitted infection (STI) and she had never consulted a doctor.

In 2000, a friend introduced Pahari to Shustha Jibon, a community-based organization managed by and supporting hijras, the term used in South Asia for people like Pahari who are considered the “third gender.” Shustha Jibon, which translates into English as healthy life, has been working in Dhaka to reduce the risk of HIV and STI transmission among hijras.

These efforts have been funded by USAID and supported by FHI since 2000, since many in this group are sex workers and considered to be at high risk of transmitting HIV. Within this context, USAID through FHI supports two Shusta Jibon’s health center in Sympur and Savar, Dhaka where hijras drop in or are referred by outreach workers and peer educators to receive HIV counseling and testing, STI diagnosis and treatment, condoms and behavior change messages.

At the Shustha Jibon Health Center, Pahari met many others like herself and at last found a place where she felt part of a community and could share her feelings. She began practicing safe sex, and soon became an outreach worker. She now works to save lives by promoting condom use, HIV testing, and diagnosis and treatment of STIs. “Shustha Jibon gave me the confidence to move forward,” she says.

PHOTO: Miss Pahari distributes awards to peer educators who are promoting HIV prevention and testing. (FHI/Bangladesh)