Baby Jim Aditya is 'Ibu' Condom<\/p>\n
By Mehru Jaffer<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): What makes 38-year-old Baby Jim Aditya really
\nmad about most Indonesian women is their blind faith in myths
\nlike genital mutilation makes women better cooks.<\/p>\n
She was beside herself with rage when she was told that women
\nmust be circumcised to enable them to cook a tastier pot of rice.<\/p>\n
And when she could bear no longer to listen to similar
\nstories, she decided to make it a mission in life to educate as
\nmany women as possible about their bodies and to insist that
\nsexuality is not just about physical organs but a state of mind,
\nabout feelings.<\/p>\n
Not that Baby is highly educated herself, in the formal sense.
\nShe graduated high school, but her university has been life
\nitself. \"I have no university degree but plenty of first hand
\nexperience,\" says the fashion designer, singer-actress and one of
\nthe most glamorous AIDS activists in town. She sees herself as a
\nbridge between the handful of highly educated members of high
\nsociety and the sprawling masses.<\/p>\n
When she is not performing on stage for Teater Koma or talking
\nabout her favorite topic of Women and AIDS at five star hotels
\nand before an audience of expatriates, much of her time is spent
\nin roaming the mean streets of Jakarta, often with a guitar,
\nsharing information about the dangers of casual and unsafe sex.
\nSimply because many women have one sexual partner does not make
\nthem safe from infectious diseases, including sexually
\ntransferred ones like Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).
\nShe would like all Indonesian women to know this, to accept this
\nfact.<\/p>\n
It pains her to see so many of the country's children out on
\nthe street at night time. But she refuses to put all the blame on
\nprostitutes for spreading diseases like AIDS. \"If men did not
\ncome to them there would be no prostitution,\" adding that men go
\nto other women not because the previous one is not a good cook
\nbut because society allows men to fully gratify their sexual
\ndesires in whatever way they like. But women are deprived of
\nthose same pleasures often by getting their genitalia mutilated.<\/p>\n
However, Baby's campaign is not about putting women up on a
\npedestal and men down, but to create awareness amongst all those
\nwho are ignorant so that the glaring imbalance between the two
\nsexes that exists here is reduced.<\/p>\n
As long as the subject of sexuality remains sugar coated with
\nmorality and is not discussed openly and frankly people will
\nremain unaware of the dangers that await them and their children,
\nsays Baby who has defied everything that is taboo to make the
\nlarge community of long-distant, night-time truck drivers one of
\nthe main target groups of her aggressive, one-woman campaign
\nagainst AIDS.<\/p>\n
She is a regular visitor to the 600-strong community at the
\nBekasi Bus Depot where she is often welcomed by crude and jeering
\ntruck drivers, as Ibu Condom. Some of the more macho drivers even
\nlook upon her as a sex starved person and offer their services,
\nbegging to be allowed to cure her of her obsession with sex. But
\nwhat keeps her going is her one belief that people are not bad.
\nAll they need is someone to trust in them. She tries to convince
\nthem that she is not a teacher, only someone who is concerned
\nabout their health like their sister or mother would be.<\/p>\n
Her persistence seems to be paying off, as many truck drivers
\nhave painted colorful slogans on the back of their vehicles
\nsaying, \"Bring home money and not AIDS!\" And when they playfully
\nask her to demonstrate how to use a condom, she obliges without
\nbatting an eye-lid.<\/p>\n
\"I don't mind them calling me names. What is in a name? I
\ndon't care what they think of me. I am pleased as long as I am
\nallowed to share with them what I know,\" says the winner of the
\nNestle Bearbrand Women's Award. And what Baby knows is that the
\nnumber of people who die each year from AIDS is at least 500
\ntimes higher than estimated by the government. This is because
\nthe government releases figures that include only those cases
\nthat are reported.<\/p>\n
While the official tally of AIDS victims in the country is
\n1080; according to the World Health Organization (WHO) it is at
\nleast 25,000. \"But who knows how many of the more than 200
\nmillion Indonesians have AIDS?\" Baby wonders.<\/p>\n
AIDS must be confronted and not suffered in silence and it is
\nnot just the problem of prostitutes and truck drivers but
\neveryone's. Baby asserts that everyone is needed to fight the
\nspread of the dreaded disease.<\/p>\n
Due to hypocrisy and lack of knowledge she feels that most
\nIndonesians tend to equate AIDS as a problem that is related to
\nkafirs, promiscuous foreigners, and that it has nothing to do
\nwith the god fearing, five-time praying Muslims. \"This I am
\nafraid is another myth. The disease does not discriminate between
\nMuslim and non-Muslim. When it attacks, it makes a victim of
\nanyone who is found vulnerable.\"<\/p>\n
Baby learned to care for others when, at the age of 17, she
\nfound herself fatherless and forced to fend for six younger
\nsiblings. The first thing she did was give up her dream of going
\nto university. She found a job as a radio announcer and
\ntelevision news reader. Later she trained at Susan Budihardjo's
\nfashion school in haute couture.<\/p>\n
After all these years of caring for others it has become a
\nhabit with her. In fact she experiences the greatest high, she
\nsays when she can touch someone who is in pain and listens to
\ntheir needs.<\/p>\n
It was more than 10 years ago, in 1987, when she heard about
\nthe first AIDS related death in Bali.<\/p>\n
What inspired her to involve herself in a campaign against
\nAIDS was the strange attitude of those around her towards the
\nAIDS victim, who happened to be a white person. Everybody she
\ntalked to seemed to suggest that AIDS was a problem that
\nafflicted only foreigners.<\/p>\n
It was then that Baby's husband, Jim Bary Aditya, the long-
\nhaired art director of Matra, the country's only magazine for
\nmen, one of the founders of Teatre Koma, penned a letter to
\nElizabeth Taylor. He invited her to come here to talk about the
\ndangers of AIDS, with the thought that people would listen more
\nreadily to someone famous like Taylor.<\/p>\n
While the busy, aging Hollywood actress has still not been
\nable to include Indonesia as one of her campaign destinations,
\nBaby has continued her numerous one-woman activities across the
\ncountry, speaking, and distributing information and free condoms.<\/p>\n
Baby is encouraged by a WHO survey that shows sex education
\nprograms actually encourage young people to postpone penetrative
\nsexual intercourse, or, if they are already sexually active to
\nreduce the number of partners and have safer sex.<\/p>\n
Baby includes in her talks the hypocrisy of a society that
\npunishes the prostitute but not the men who patronize her. When a
\nhigh school student gets pregnant she is not allowed to return to
\nschool to complete her studies but the man responsible for the
\npregnancy goes free. To legalize abortion or to use
\ncontraceptives is not to promote promiscuity but to give people a
\nchoice. She looks upon these suggestions as harm reducing
\nmeasures and not as a law of life.<\/p>\n
Listening to her speak this way some parents forbid their
\nchildren to have anything to do with her.<\/p>\n
\"That is alright with me. I don't take that as an insult. For
\nchildren come to me anyway with many questions that their parents
\nrefuse to address. Nothing is taboo between me and my two sons
\n(14 years and 10 years old) and their friends. With us, sex is
\nnot a moral issue. It is just another fact of life,\" she says
\nwith a contented smile. For as long as the younger generation is
\nlistening to her, Baby feels that she has much to smile about.<\/p>",
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