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Maleda
Thank you so much for the most instructional messages you convey to us in your serial drama programs focusing on family problems, mistreatment of women and HIV/AIDS.
As you know, many of our sisters, unable to cope with the stress and demands of life, are forced into the demeaning life of prostitution. As a result, they distance themselves from the world of education and remain ignorant. Worse still, they remain exposed to the lethal HIV/AIDS, and hurt themselves, their families and the society at large. I have come to learn from your drama that prostitution is an extremely risky venture.
-A listener to Maleda from Addis Ababa
Maleda (“Dawn”) is a radio serial drama that was broadcast by PMC-Ethiopia from May 2005 to September 2006. The drama is about the lifestyle of long distance truck drivers and sex workers living and working along the Addis Ababa-Djibouti highway. The program was previously distributed on cassettes to truck drivers at truck stops along the highway to Djibouti.
The drama unfolds in various towns along the highway where truck drivers rest overnight, drink heavily, and sleep with commercial sex workers. The truck drivers’ promiscuity leads them to be exposed to AIDS. The story also demonstrates how female sex workers find themselves forced into these professions, and how these women believe that selling their bodies is their only way to make enough money to support themselves and their families.
Maleda was so successful that the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office of the Government of Ethiopia (HAPCO) awarded PMC additional funds to produce more episodes and distribute them to high-risk populations via cassette, as well as to broadcast them on Radio Ethiopia.
