For Dartmouth students, life often revolves around an insular and fairly static "Hanover bubble." But Heather Tatarski '04 got a glimpse of the outside world at its most dramatic extremes when she joined MTV and the "larger than life" figures of U2 frontman Bono, "Rush Hour" star Chris Tucker and U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on a trip to observe the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic on Sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of its year-long "Fight for Your Rights: Protect Yourself" campaign, MTV announced last spring that it needed two 18-22-year-olds who had never been to Africa to accompany Bono and others and participate in confessional-style interviews.
At the time, Tatarski was working as an intern in the Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs division of MTV's New York offices.
From a field of 30 interviewed candidates, Tatarski learned on her birthday that she had been selected to appear on the hour-long program, entitled "FFYR: The Diary of Bono and Chris Tucker: Aiding Africa."
From the Trenches
On May 23, Tatarski and others at MTV began an eight-day journey through the palm trees and lush, green landscape of Kampala, Uganda and the barren ground and dust-filled air of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On a quiet first day, Tatarski and Vernon Taylor, the other young person chosen for the show, accompanied Save the Children, a non-profit organization with programs in 45 countries, to one community's "Post-Test Club." These clubs offer a place for recently-tested persons to meet to talk and feel safe.
In regions of Africa hit hardest by the HIV/AIDS epidemic -- the continent claims 70 percent of adults and 80 percent of children living with the disease, according to a 2001 Save the Children report -- persons who go in for HIV testing are often "ostracized" from their communities even if they test negative, Tatarski explained.
Tatarski first encountered Bono, Tucker, O'Neill and a media circus including crews from CNN and The Wall Street Journal the next day when MTV's entourage converged at a local water well. There Tatarski talked in a small circle with the three celebrities and a 35-year-old Kampala woman who, according to Save the Children's Web site, described her experiences as an HIV-positive mother struggling to raise three daughters while living in a 100-square-foot home lacking running water.
While treatment options in the United States often afford HIV-positive persons a degree of hope for long periods of relative health, the situation for this woman is different. In Africa, Tatarski said, the illness is "definitely a death sentence within a few years."
On another day, Tatarski and Taylor went to talk with some of Uganda's "sex workers:" young women who stand outside a small room and take turns performing services inside at rates of 25 cents to a dollar. Tatarski noted these women do not even have water to clean themselves and cannot afford to eat every day.
HIV/AIDS education among sex workers, as in many sectors of African society, falls a "step behind" information commonly known in the United States. Despite relationships with Save the Children, some of the sex workers did not realize that using two condoms simultaneously would not decrease their risk of contracting the illness.
Fear for personal safety also increases the infection rate; Tatarski noted that when MTV representatives asked the sex workers if they had ever been forced to not use a condom by a customer, they wouldn't say yes for fear of receiving beatings.
In Ethiopia, Tatarski visited the orphanage of Sister Benedicta, a disciple of Mother Teresa. The babies, children and adults lucky enough to have a home here are the area's most fortunate -- yet the scene remained populated by infants with flies covering their faces. MTV's entourage was not allowed in the orphanage's AIDS ward, likely because the scene was too horrific, Tatarski speculated.
'Guilty Fame'
According to Tatarski, as part of MTV's on-air crew, she and Taylor were "treated like movie stars and royalty," a phenomenon that took its toll on Tatarski as she compared it to the suffering around her.
The hotel room the network gave Tatarski in Ethiopia -- complete with a king-sized bed, two bathrooms and multiple phones -- was much more luxurious than she had ever experienced in the United States, and stood in stark contrast to the region's rampant poverty.
"I walked in there and just cried and cried all night," said Tatarski.
Tatarski described a sense of "guilty fame;" she felt that she had not done anything special to warrant the attention and that nothing more than birthplace determined the highly disparate fates of herself and the local population.
The moments most painful for Tatarski came when she encountered persons in her own age group, such as the Kampala woman's oldest daughter and the sex workers. MTV's cameras were a constant presence at even these most emotionally-charged moments.
The force of those issues trumped any sense of awe Tatarski might have felt at the fame of her fellow travelers. On meeting a jet-lagged Tucker clad in a baseball cap and shorts, she noted, "We're just two people."
"No matter how famous they were, the problems just shrunk that."
While Tatarski found O'Neill a more intimidating personality, she remembered Bono as approachable and very enthusiastic about discussing the pertinent issues and trying to encourage her as a young person to get involved early through actions such as writing senators.
Bono took "every chance he could to talk to me and get me excited," she noted.
That advice apparently took root: Tatarski left the experience confident that she wanted to "devote my life" to helping the situation in Africa, though she is not yet sure how.
An economics and English double-major who will study post-colonial literature next term in Trinidad, Tatarski hopes to write her thesis on Africa and continue studying the continent in graduate school. She believes that her dual academic concentration will give her a basis in both the pragmatic side of what is necessary to effect change and an awareness of emotional issues.
Summing up what she learned over the journey, Tatarski noted that she lost her own stereotypes -- such as that laziness may contribute to suffering. Around the world, Tatarski asserted, "everyone's motivated" and "they all want to be educated."
Tatarski found her internship through working with Career Services and received funding through the Rockefeller foundation.
Originally scheduled to air on August 21, "FFYR: The Diary of Bono and Chris Tucker: Aiding Africa" will now run in either mid-September or on World AIDS Day, December 1.
