SEPT 4 — I stepped into the home of the oldest transgender in the village, and was nervous.

I didn’t want Mak Lah — a leader among the transsexuals and female sex workers who had gathered to meet us — to think that I would disrespect her or any of the sex workers with her.

I looked at the equally-nervous smiles of the sex workers, gave them my biggest smile and shook each one’s hand. We sat cross-legged on the linoleum and let the stories flow.

“I’ve worked in a hair salon and as a tukang masak (cook) but the pay was really bad. Sex work pays more, and when you have a sick father’s medication to buy, you don’t have a choice,” said one transsexual.

Yes, much more. A blowjob costs RM10; penetration, a whopping RM15.

On that dark night we went on a little “tour” of the sex village, creeping between dark, dilapidated shacks where sex workers satisfied clients. Walking around, we saw men, young and old, standing around watching the sex workers, watching us. We saw them negotiating with the sex worker of their choice and walking away to a dim corner to do the deed.

“Jangan bising, nanti diorang tau hang bukan orang sini, marah depa (Be quiet, if they realise you are not from this place they will be angry),” this from Adek, a transgender who worked with the sex worker community. Adek was among the activists who promote the use of condoms and rush to the police station in the middle of night when a sex worker has been beaten.

The next morning before we left for the big city, Adek brought us back to the kampong and pointed to a patch of land, fenced off a little way from the nearest shack. A ramshackle bed stood amidst the tall grass for couples who preferred doing it under the sky.

All this was about five years ago, when as a journalist I tagged along with a group of AIDS activists visiting a sex worker community at a place the locals called “kampong sex” or the sex village. At the time, I had become slightly familiar with HIV and AIDS issues, and was drawn to the complexities of the disease both as a journalist and as a human being.

When I met Mona a year before, she was attached to Malaysian AIDS Council. As the activist who invited me on the trip, she was also the person responsible for the toughest story I ever wrote.

I remember, very clearly, sitting in front of my computer in the newsroom, head in my hands, wondering how I was going to pen the story of a community that had rocked me out of my comfort zone.

Numerous trips to the smoking room, too many cups of vending machine coffee and six hours later, I was still struggling with the first paragraph.

On a recent Sunday as Mona and I drove back to KL after a weekend break, she says: “Sham, do you remember that Kampong B we went to?”

“Yeah,” I go.

“Most of them are dead.”

I was dumbstruck. “How? What happened?” Silence. “AIDS?” I ask. My friend nods.

“And Adek has slipped,” she adds.

I was mortified. I thought of Adek. Of how resolved he was to serve the community, his community.

“Oh my God, Mona,” I say for the lack of anything better. She nods.

I am not going to tell you that HIV is on the rise in this country or that the number of husband-to-wife transmissions is increasing shamefully while the number of drug users becoming infected is actually decreasing because the needle and syringe exchange programme and methadone replacement therapy work.

What I will say is that HIV testing is available at most GP clinics and that medications are affordable if you are a middle-income earner, and if you can’t, then there are mechanisms to assist you.

You will read this piece, and very soon, forget you did.

But remember this: In the past five years, 90 transgenders have died, including nine in the past month alone.

And this: an entire kampong of 40 people is almost annihilated from a disease that is oh-so-preventable.

Stop AIDS. Keep the promise. Use a condom.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.