HELP Thailand

This January I’m working with Help Thailand, an organization which focuses on rescuing girls who are at risk of becoming prostitutes. Their goal is to save these girls from being broken—the Cambodian word for prostitute srey kouc literally means “broken women,” broken in a way that cannot be repaired—by providing shelter, food, and education.

Everyone helps with macheteing the meet
for dinner.

Tati, our newest addition, is sixteen months old and was found about four months ago. Two of Help Thailand’s house parents were walking on the street when they saw her mother literally trying to sell her daughter. Usually girls are identified as “at risk” due to their family’s extreme poverty level. Families who can’t afford food (or alcohol) often use their daughter’s virginity as the price for securing a better life.

Every rescue story is different for each girl, but the general procedure after she (or he; Help Thailand has a small boy’s home as well) involves securing legal rights to raise the girl, including, of course, parental consent. In some cases this is extremely difficult because the parents are passed out drunk or the girl might (often) be from a hill tribe. More on that later, but sometimes hill tribe people (with their own language and culture distinct from other Thais and other ethnic tribes) don’t have Thai citizenship.

Parents are encouraged to stay in contact with their children, and on Christmas HELP Thailand hosted a party for all the girls and their families. Just today, Nana’s mother and younger sister visited—Nana was euphoric all day.

The current HELP Thailand compound has three houses: two girls’ houses and one boy’s house. Each of the girl’s homes has about 40 girls and the boy’s home has eight boys. Each home has house parents, but as you can imagine, the ratio of adults to children could be problematic when it comes to keeping things clean, getting to school on time, and mealtimes.

Well, almost everyone. The younger girls are on sweeping
or mopping detail, so they often get done faster.

However, the girls are remarkably self-sufficient. Each of the younger girls is paired with an older girl who helps her get ready in the morning. Breakfast is at 6 o’clock sharp; devotions are at 6:30.  When they get home from school around 3:30, each of the girls does her chore to keep things clean. Beds are always made, possessions are put away, and everyone helps with meals and clean-up.

The girls play music (there are several guitarists and pianists here and one budding violin player), run around the yard (today I saw the most ingenious slapdash baseball game), and study hard. The girls range from Tati’s one year up to nineteen years old and about to graduate, so there’s plenty going on at all times. When they graduate from high school, some of the girls stay on to help at the homes; others start work. Some go on to university, if they have the financial support.

The Road of Lost Innocence

As most of you know, I’m in Thailand living in a home with forty-five Thai girls who have been rescued from the sex slave trade. It’s an ongoing issue about which I feel very passionately and, turns out, America has to too because President Obama has declared January to be Human Trafficking Prevention Month.[1]

This is Nana. She's 12 and sings like
a dream.

I’m going to be writing about sex trafficking and posting links to documentaries and to articles by people who can write better than I can and who have more information. At least for this month, I beg you to join me in spreading the world. I’ll do my best to convince you of the necessity, but my words always fall short.

Misconceptions about the sex trade both in SE Asia and worldwide are appalling and systemic. I’m going to start with a rather lengthy quote I’ve found in a Thailand travel guide written by one Roger Jones:

“Moralists are sometimes shocked at the number of Thai girls working in massage parlors, bars, and similar institutions. A survey by Chulalongkorn University estimates that there are 200,000[2] commercial sex workers in Thailand. However...the job holds many attractions for the girls: it pays better than most other jobs; the working conditions are better; and it is far more enjoyable than working in a factory or planting rice. ..A fair proportion are country girls who hope to make their fortune and return to their villages one day with money jingling in their purses.”

He goes on to say that “visiting a massage parlor can be an intriguing experience,” offers helpful hints on how to find the bars that cater to “all tastes,” and warns that “visitors caught having sex with anyone under the age of eighteen could land in prison.”

I do wonder if he thinks the moralists are being fussy when they are shocked about people eager to buy sex with twelve-year-old girls.

I also wonder exactly how much research Roger did into this field. I offer, instead, the writings of Somaly Man. She writes about the sex trade in Cambodia—very similar to Thailand’s—as a former prostitute who was sold to a brothel to pay off her “caretaker’s” debts.

She writes here about her first days working as a slave and the punishment she received for fighting both of the first two men who had paid for her:

“Afterward, they took me down to the cellar. They kept animals there, snakes and scorpions. They weren’t meant to kill us—they kept them to frighten us. It was a small room, totally dark, and it stank of sewage. They tied me up and before they left, they dumped the snakes on me.”

Though she was left there for roughly a day, she continued to rebel. She tried to run away once and even risked punishment to set two new girls free.

“Li [the man in charge of her brothel] beat me with his cane and tied me naked to a bed. Anyone who came was given the pleasure of looking at me. Despite everything I’d been through I was fundamentally modest, and this experience was horrible. That night his brother and all their friends took their turn with me while I was still tied up. It went on like that for a week. I was sick, shaking with fever...one night Li dumped a bucket of live maggots on me. Hideous maggots, like the ones on meat. When he realized how much they frightened me, he began dumping them into my mouth and on my body...I have nightmares about [it], even now.”

Of course not all prostitutes suffer as Somaly did, but neither her young age nor the terrors she endured are exceptional. Somaly is quick to downplay her own horrors in light of the current tragedy:

“My punishment was harsh, but the way they punish prostitutes today is far worse than anything I ever had to suffer...Now I see girls in brothels with nails hammered into their skulls. That sounds unbelievable, but we have photos. Girls are chained, beaten with electric cables. They go mad.”

One-third of the prostitutes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia are young children.

Please keep reading this month and please help me spread this information. Give me any comments, ask any questions.

Somaly Man quotes were taken from her book “The Road of Lost Innocence.” As you can tell, it’s a graphic read, but extremely well-written and a fantastic introduction into the SE Asian version of the sex trade epidemic. (A book review I believe to be helpful is here: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-the-road-of-lost/)

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[1] http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/12/obama-declares-human-trafficking-prevention-month/1

[2] This is a ridiculously low-balled number, perhaps because the book is old. But it had better be older than 1974, because the study in ’74 done by the same university reported between 500,000 and 700,000. The 2004 estimate is 2.8 million.

A New Kind of New Years

The holidays aren’t really my thing, but I’ve decided I don’t mind New Years in Thailand too much. It was 80 degrees and sunny all day with plenty of time for reading, writing, running, badminton, necklace-making, napping, more reading, and more writing—all before the sun went down.

When it did, I and the other Westerners here (I need to do yet another cast of characters soon; my apologies) trooped over to the other girls’ home on the property just in time for dinner. It was a special night with two kinds of protein (egg and chicken!) as well as the ever-present and always delicious rice. Dessert was rice with sugar. Delicious.

The evening festivities began at eight with all the people present taking turns saying what they were thankful for. It took a while because every person required a translator. The adults took forever to say the tiniest things, but the girls were eloquent in their succinctness. They thanked God for keeping them safe and fed and bringing them to this home. They spoke about God’s love and his blessing in their lives. They spoke with conviction I’ve rarely heard in such young Christians.

I heard some of their stories, so I understand why. Our youngest girl, Tati, is only 16 months old and was brought to this girls’ home only a few weeks ago when her mother was selling her on the streets of Chiang Mai. Dora, once little more than a skeleton now a mini Dora the Explorer with chubby cheeks and big, round eyes, was found taking care of herself at the age of two while her alcoholic mother spent all the money she had on drinks. Nana, a little girl who loves to sing “Happy Birthday” and say “I love you,” suffered from a fever when she was seven that stagnated her mental capacity and her physical growth. She was too poor to go to school, but soon she hopes to enter a small school for mentally challenged girls.

After the serious stuff the girls watched a Thai movie (it looked hilarious) while the westerners sat and talked around a campfire. Around ten-thirty the movie was shut off and suddenly everyone was playing games and screaming and laughing. Everyone who lost got their names written down and had to act like a chicken when all the games were finished. By the time we’d all calmed down to have another snack—rice soup and jello, not mixed—it was quarter to midnight and time to light off the lanterns.

Have you seen Tangled? It was like that.

Then fireworks were set off while we were only feet away. The little girl next to me snuggled close and squealed (all right, I squealed a little too) when they banged only twenty feet above our heads. When the last lantern was launched and the last firecracked sparked, we all hugged and said “Happy New Year” and “sawadi pimai ka!”

As one of my little Thai sisters in Christ reminded us, “The Bible says that ‘the old has gone and the new is here!’”

Amen (so be it).

Only, Already, Still: Always

Flower seller at the bottom of the hill.

Flower supplier.

Smoke break at the waterfall.

Roasted crab. yum.

Everybody loves youtube

Thai tea: gamechanger

Traveling

Everything happens so quickly. Everything happens so slowly. It seems odd that we have only one word for week and month and year. You can count them in days or minutes instead, but numbers are such constant little things that can’t be flexed and flopped into what they really mean.

And five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes—as Jonathan Larson has already discussed in great length—is not an accurate measurement of a year.

As an English teacher, it makes me think of the importance of the words “only” and “already” and using them correctly when describing the inconsistencies of the time continuum.

I only moved to Korea four months ago.[1]

I already miss Korea like it’s home.[2]

I only came to Thailand three days ago.[3]

I’m already used to living in a Thai girls’ orphanage.

At least there are still plenty of “stills” and a couple of “always’.”

I still can’t read a word a word of Thai nor take an efficient Bucket Shower, and I’ll always write about and gape at the spinning of the world. Time the destroyer is time the preserver...

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[1] I spent more time in my mom’s tummy—and more hours on the soccer field—than I’ve spent in Korea! (Guesstimate for the second one, but I’d guess the first is fairly accurate)

[2] I miss its gimbap its almost-discernible language, and its Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday Soccer Boys.

[3] Cobras seen: 0. Success.

My New Thai Life

I woke up to the sounds of 45 little girls scraping their plates clean with bent-up metal forks and spoons. There was chatter and hand-games and crisp school uniforms for about three different schools (based on the girls’ ages). Devotions were next, which I watched through bleary eyes and my glasses and mechanically swallowed my egg and rice breakfast.

Devotions were concluded by the only word I recognized—amen—and in the subsequent scurry, everyone grabbed pencils, notebooks, and backpacks for the school day. It feels like any other school morning—except this time I will stay at home with the moms, watching the girls get on the bus one by one.

Except the bus is a hardy but dirty Mazda truck with benches in the bed, and I can’t understand a word of what the girls are saying as they climb over the tailgate.

As we sit here and wait for the final bus to come and take the oldest girls, some are studying (I heard there’s a big chemistry test today), others are playing with the two girls who don’t go to school, and others are ribbing each other—slaps and points are universal language.

I’m starting to recognize numbers and names in Thai. Yesterday Nan and I covered numbers as swung together on the porch swing. Nan is twelve, but was never allowed into school and now she’s too old to start. She’s bright, though, and learning English quickly. She loves to sing the Happy Birthday song and play hand-games. She has burn marks on her wrists and her eyes are permanently damaged from a severe fever when she was younger. She’s not a patient teacher, but she drilled me on my numbers, one through fifty.

I’m still getting everyone else’s name mixed up left and right, though. They all seem to start with a b. Brie, Bang, Bot, Bo, Betty, Becky Beckham. Okay, so Becky and Beckham are two of the dogs, and I made some others up. But Brie is one of the house moms, and the girls call her “P Brie.”  The p is added to the front of names and is sort of a sign of respect and love.

It's so very green here.

Roosters do crow at the crack of dawn here and the sun glazes into the trees quickly once it decides it’s up. Nature’s first green is a silvery gold, with grey mountains in the background and a pale blue sky. It smells fresh here, raw—the way summer nights camping sometimes smell, if the park’s good enough, and exactly the way Korea, with its cement ground and skyscrapers, does not.

The house seems so empty and cheerless now without them all pattering around. P Brie and I watched the last of them ride off in the Mazda minutes ago. The roosters stopped crowing and now I can hear the low menace-buzz of the bees above me. An unknown bird cackles in the flower tree by the swing. I wait and I watch the sunrise in what’s left of the home.

Greetings from Thailand

Twelve hours is a long time to be on a bus. Especially after a full day of stress, only half a night’s sleep and a 45 minute taxi drive at eight in the morning. But I signed up for that option (instead of a plane) because it allowed me ample time to stare out the window at the Thai countryside.

Yeah, I’m in Thailand. O_o

My brain is still processing the abrupt switch of cultures—neither my own—so my blog post today will be scattered at best. Right now I’m impressed by the world’s bigness and my smallness and the remarkable similarities between cultures. Mountains are mountains, trees are trees, buses are buses, and—as always—people are people.

But Thai people are excessively nice. They love to help you, even if there’s no reason to. I must have asked to borrow ten different peoples’ cell phones and no one hesitated to start dialing the number I showed them on my palm. I didn’t even need to ask a couple people and they just started to call for me. Also, they get to ride on top of service vehicles and it seems like everyone and their pet dog (full size dogs, too! Not just the little toys they have in Korea) seems to own a moped.

Also, Thai goods are cheap. My 45 minute taxi ride cost about $6. My train ticket across the entire country cost about $12. A good meal is $2, tops.

Finally, Thai land is green and gold. A lot of it is brown, too, of course, because it’s dry here right now. But the grass—and let’s not underestimate the beauty and homeyness of having grass!—is practically neon with healthy green color. Occasionally some tall spire or statue of Buddha will jut through the roadside foliage in a shocking display of gold.

Maybe I’ll write more coherently tomorrow. The last twenty-four hours included Busan subways—Shanghai layovers—an overnight in the squalor of Bangkok—every Thai city between Bangkok and Chiang Mai—Thai bathrooms (more, obviously, on that later)—and Chiang Mai where it’s idyllic and, as yet, virtually unknown.

 Blessings, my friends.

Welcome to Chiang Mai. Leave your flip-flops at the door.