Love146 Partnership Trip: Last Days

It's been awhile since my last post, and I'm sorry! It's true that the last month has been incredibly busy, with weddings, lots of work, and out-of-town guests.  But if I'm honest with myself, and with you, I think I just needed to step away for a few weeks, do a bit of grieving, and recatch my breath.

I'm hoping I'm ready now to come back and pick up the torch again.  First I need to finish writing about the last few days of the Love146 trip.  

We spent most of Sunday traveling from northern Thailand back to the Bangkok airport (our beloved hub), where we had an intense discussion with the Philippine Airlines workers for more than an hour to actually give us boarding tickets for our flight to Manila.  (Long story, still not quite sure any of us understand it either.)  We got to Manila in the evening, had Japanese food at our hotel (yum) and went to bed.

Monday was pretty much a free day and we spent the day decompressing.  Paula, Matt, Kristian and I sat around a table at the breakfast buffet and talked for almost two hours about everything from the trip to books we had read to microloans to the practice of tithing.   I loved that morning.  Paula and I spent the rest of the day talking and exploring the hotel and the little surrounding area.  I bought a pair of sandals for $4 and wore them to our dinner with Love146 staff and other nonprofit organizations that had gathered in the area.  I was really excited to meet Rob in person, because it was his story that got me so involved with anti child sex trafficking in the first place.

Paula and I are standing in the hotel lobby when we catch sight of him; spiky, slightly graying hair, tattoos running up his forearms.  I recognize him immediately from the Love146 videos, but am surprised and flattered when he knows who I am.   We follow Rob to a hotel conference room and spend the evening eating with him, Love146's Dr. Gundelina Velazco, and several other Love146 workers and NGOs fighting child trafficking and exploitation.  The evening is capped off with this play by a group called the Stairway Foundation.  It is another inspiring night of being surrounded by people using their lives to take on the battle for rescuing children.  At one point in between bites of cake someone asks Rob about the tattoos on his arms.  He beams as he brings out a photograph of his family, a blend of biological and adopted children, his smiling wife, and their dog.  He then ticks off the names of each of his kids; they are written in bold ink around a single word on his right forearm says, "Tribe."  On the other forearm is a detailed, delicate image of a young Cambodian girl, accompanied by the word "Mercy."  

"Do you know what ever happened to #146?" someone else asks. "Did you ever see her again?"  

He pauses before saying, "You know, people ask me that question all the time.  And the truth is that I don't know what happened to her, and I don't know if I ever will.  But I think about her and see her face almost every single night before I can go to sleep." 

***

The next morning we wake and ride in a jostling van for a good length of time out to the brand new Love146 safehome--also known as "The Round Home."  The Round Home is, as you might guess, completely round and has no sharp edges or dark corners.  It houses 7 girls and we have the enormous honor and privilege to attend the opening ceremony of the home.  We pull into the whitewashed gates and Rob makes a joke that we are entering the Rolls Royces of safehomes.  There is lush, green grass; a treehouse for playing and therapy sessions; an open-air chapel with a rounded roof; and the home itself, which is decorated with bright, round circles in reds, oranges, pinks.  I am handed a program printed with "Love146 Safehome Opening Ceremony," and my name handwritten on it.  To see the realization of the ideas and painstaking work and prayers and donations and vision and everything that went into making this home, and the look in Rob's eyes as he takes it all in, makes me cry with the honor of it all.  The girls are peeking out of the slats of the windows, watching us as we look with awe and tears at their beautiful new home.

Marie Morin, the Love146 New England taskforce director, flew

 out to the Philippines a week early to teach the girls some choreographed dances for the ope

ning.  She is dark-haired and beautiful and has a thick Long Island accent.  Her husband Paul is the project manager for the Round Home, and his planning and handiwork are evident everywhere.  We sit, a

 group of less than twenty, in folding chairs around the open air chapel and the girls emerge in a line, smiling.  The ceremony is a celebration of speeches, clappi

ng, and the girls' dancing, of their colorful costumes and choreography.  They wave scarves and flags in the air with

 their movements, and at one point the music cuts out so we all start singing so they can finish the rest of the dance.  

We eat dinner together under tents as the sun sets.  The girls are energetic and friendly, gathering around to hug Marie and Paul, calling Rob "father."  He pulls out his laptop to show them a portion of a Paramore concert.  When the lead singer mentions Love146 and points to a 146 badge on her shirt, the girls shriek with excitement. They laugh and cheer and shout "I love you Paramore!" into Rob's tiny Flipcam, so he can take it to the band and show them what they have helped to accomplish.

We take a tour of the inside of the Round Home and the girls show us their rooms.  There is a pink room with hot pink plastic armchairs and a bookshelf lined with toys.  This is the therapy room.  I reach into my backpack and pull out the Beloved quilt that I've been working on for the past few months at home and at the Beloved quilt sew-ins, and shyly present it to Dr. Velazco.  She graciously said, "This will be perfect for the girls to point to the different colors in the sessions to help explain what they are 

feeling."  I know the joy that I had in hearing that made the quilt more of a gift for me than likely any of the recipients it was intended for.    

The reality begins to set in that we are leaving in the morning, and that the things we have seen on the trip will be coming home with us.  I know that I will think of these moments every day, for the months and years to follow.  What I don't know yet is that the hurt that has been kept at bay to get through the trip in one piece will come slowly and at times least expected, and that I have been affected much more deeply than I even understood at the time.  While it's painful, I hope that this certain part of me never quite heals back to the point I can forget it.  

The girls, just like at the Thailand safehome, gather around the van as we pull away, waving and cheering.  Tonight, at home in Massachusetts one month later, I am pledging to support the work the Roundhome is doing a world away in the Philippines--to give these girls love, a home, guidance, and a new life, for a mere $25 a month.  If you'd be interested in being a part of this work, too, you can consider joining me to support the Roundhome here. 

Over the past few weeks I've realized that I came back from this trip with many new heroes: each of the workers we met who have made this their fulltime job and life's goal; my teammembers; the beautiful, determined, inspiring girls themselves.  But there's a special one in particular.  You'd recognize him by the ink etched up and down the insides of his arms, and the love for justice and the girls he has helped to redeem etched deep on his heart.  

Love146 Partnership Trip: Day 4

Northern Thailand

April 25, 2009

"Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning." Psalm 30:5

We wake early and head back to the Bangkok airport to board a flight to a northern city in Thailand.  The flowers and trees, from birds of paradise to leopard-spotted orchids, are blooming and fill the air with a sweet, alive smell that I've missed through the winter months.  They also wreak absolute havoc on Kristian's allergies.  Our hotel lobby is open and airy; the heads of white flowers float in a glassy fountain.

Today we are going to our first safehome, a partner organization that Love146 has supported for years.  The safehome compound is only a short ride from our hotel.  It is beautiful, with a swingset out front, and overlooks a wide field of lush green that stretches on behind it.  Shadows of mountains rise up out of the ground, and there are no buildings in sight.  Alice*, the woman who started and currently runs the safehome, greets us as our van pulls into the heavy, wrought-iron gate.  She is someone who radiates peace, and her voice is low and soothing as she clicks between Thai and English.  She takes a seat on our bus for a slightly longer ride out to a resort, where we join the safehome girls

 (about 30 of them) and their Thai caregivers for lunch.  It is a large buffet, spilling over with spicy chicken soup curry ladled over thin noodles; bits of fried fish; stirfried vegetables; sushi.  Two women behind a bar spoon out coconut ice cream and Thai milk tea for dessert.   Paula and I sit at a table with Alice, and she tells us about the girls.  They are shy at first and eat at their own tables.  I ask Alice, although I think I already know the answer, if any of the youngest girls are by chance someone's daughter.  One of them in particular is so tiny, with a pink shirt and white sandals emblazoned with Mickey Mouse.  With a slight shake of her head, she confirms: Their oldest girl is 22.  The youngest is 6; she came to the house two years ago, when she was only 4 years old.

While another European family from Alice's home country also lives here and works with the organization, Alice's plan has always been to raise up Thai workers and eventually give the entire mission to them.  But it is clear, beyond nationalities, that these girls see Alice as their mother.  She holds them, she disciplines them, and she loves them; and they clearly love her back.

Today is a special treat for the girls--we are taking them on a mini-hike to a waterfall.  Lunch has eased their apprehension and they let a few of us join them for the ride to the waterfall in the back of their open air truck.  We pile in, 4 of us from the team situated between 7 girls, sitting side-by-side on two benches facing each other.  The breeze blows through the cabin and we take turns saying our names and ages.  The girl to my left is 8; to my right is 10.  They are quiet and shy.  The older teenagers speak a little English and are more talkative.  

"Do y'all know any songs?" Sharon asks, her blond hair blowing around her face.  Without too much prodding, M.* starts singing a praise song in English that we all actually know: "Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness, open my heart, let me see; Beauty that made this heart adore you, hope of a life spent with you."  We all sing, the girls laughing and smiling at our exuberance, and it is like the sweetest salve for yesterday's rawness and despair.  The girls become more open and talkative as the 30-minute ride progresses and we exchange attempts to communicate.  We teach them a song with hand motions as the trees overhead get thicker and the sunlight grows less intense.  

The smallest girls aren't old enough to go on the hike, so one of the caregivers takes them to a shady bank to play near the river while the rest of us push on to the jungle path.  The hike itself takes about 30 minutes, a trail carved in between thick stalks of bamboo and a deep ravine to our right side.  Some of the Thai we pass seem amused to see us, panting and pinkfaced, next to the unfazed kids.  M., who is 14 but looks about 10, walks with me the entire way and starts

 to teach me words in Thai as we walk.  "Mai pai," she says, pointing at the bamboo.  "Heen" is rock.  "

What's waterfall?" "Naam dtok," she replies.  Then she adds more words and continues to quiz me about every fifty paces.  My shirt is wet with sweat and my face is flushed a dark pink by the time we climb down the last decline to the waterfall.  It crashes down the cliff side into laughing children below.  

The girls go right in with their clothes on, splashing one another and playing.  I stand among the rocks for a long time, letting the mist from the waterfall spray my face, and watching them.  This is what it is all for.  To see them happy, playing, out under the open blue sky.  This image in my mind will forever be one of the best things I've ever experienced.  It feels like being in the very heart of hope, the moment that it's realized.  

By the time we are back at the safehome the sun is setting over the field.  A meal is b

eing cooked in the open air kitchen.  The youngest girl grabs my hand and shows me her bed.  It has a stuffed animal and two little dolls resting on the pillow.  Two dogs run around the girls' feet; there are also plans for ducks and a few chickens in the future.

As we say our goodbyes one of the girls runs out to give me a gift: a little ceramic lamb, handpainted.  Some of the other girls run to get theirs and bestow them on the rest of the team.  Kristian's is painted blue and missing part of its face.  M. runs up to say goodbye and tells me that she loves me.  I tell her that I love her, too, and she waves enthusiastically until our bus pulls out of the gate.  

After all of the anger, heartache, and despair, this is what I know is true: Hope is living, playing, laughing, breathing, in a small safehome in Thailand, and it is giving us something to carry home.  

Love146 Partnership Trip: Day 3

Friday, April 24

Phnom Penh

This day is, without question, the worst.

Phillip and our van driver pull up to the hotel at 8:30 Friday morning.  We load our luggage into the trunk and set off for another notorious Cambodian slum.  The morning is already heavy and humid.  "You pick the hottest month to come to Cambodia," Phillip says, laughing.

We again drive down the street, now more used to having to weave and jolt through the Phnom Penh traffic.  When the van drops us off a short time later, we coat ourselves in sunscreen and bugspray, take our daily Malarone pill, and set off down a winding back alleyway.  

The first thing I notice are the flies, shimmering in the air and blanketing rows of exposed food on the ground--bowls of rice and little shelled snails, all covered with flies, all seemingly still planned to be eaten.  Garbage is everywhere, under our feet, spilling out in piles and half-disintegrated into the ground.  Children surround us, running past, some calling out, "Hello!  Hello!"  We smile and wave as we walk deeper into the slum, and they return to their playing.

The partner organization we're visiting today is behind a corroded aluminum sliding gate.  It opens to a dusty courtyard filled with children laughing and screaming as they chase each other.  They are playing some sort of English language-learning game.  The words "elephant" and "yellow" are taped to the inside of the enclosing walls.  Occasionally someone skids on their knees on a strip of concrete, then gets up and continues running.  Most have no shoes.

We are ushered into a small, hot room which serves as the office and are introduced to the man who runs the organization, G.*  His English is good and he beams at us as he explains the program and what it offers to the children: schooling, meals, vocational training, shelter for certain individuals.  And here the complexity continues to unravel.  This slum, like the one from yesterday, and each of the others we will see today, is mostly filled with ethnic Vietnamese, who migrated to Cambodia after the Vietnamese government overthrew the Khmer Rouge, and now live in a state of non-citizenship.  They have no legal papers, which makes it nearly impossible to find jobs.  They are also heavily discriminated against.  Currently, no government/country takes responsibility for their lives.  

G. gestures to a wall of business cards, separated into categories with labels like "trafficking" and "medical care."  Each of the business cards represent other partners, lined up like a little paper army to battle against all of the trappings these people face.  A small handwritten sign on the wall serves as a reminder that "Trafficking is complicated: A child would often rather be trafficked [for sex or labor] than lose their family."  

After G. finishes telling us how he came to be the director of the program, we step back out into the sunlight and walk through the rest of the compound; I stop in one of the tiny rooms to buy necklaces made out of wrapped paper.  It's one of the skills that the young people are learning to earn a small income.  A group of children eating breakfast under a shaded area clasp their palms together at their chins and sing a greeting to us as we pass.  Sweat runs down our faces and arms.  "The power is out again," G. says, not apologetically, not complaining: just fact.  It's in the 90's and climbing.

We finish our brief tour and then leave the compound, winding our way back out of the

cavernous alleyways.  On the way we stop at a one-room shack.   Inside is a woman sitting crosslegged on the ground.  Smoke curls off of incense sticks and her young daughter brings us miniature, cracked plastic stools to sit on.  The woman is ill, and HIV-positive.  She strings delicate silk flower petals together with quick, nimble stitches at her fingertips, and makes them into a bouquet, offering it to Sharon as a gift.  Her daughter runs to get us cold bottled water.  G. tells us in English that this woman has had to sell her young son.  We set a tiny pile of worn, faded dollar bills on the floor next to her collection of silk flower petals, and leave humbled by a new understanding of what it means to be generous to strangers even in the midst of nothing.

Photo by bartpogoda

Soon we are out of the slum and back into the blazing sun.  We cross the street carefully, in a group, to avoid being hit by a motorbike.  This first slum was bad; but it was about to get much worse.

We venture down a dirt path strewn with garbage and more flies, and then turn on to a small side alley.  Shacks line both sides of the road, and are flanked at the end by a large shed overflowing with garbage bags.  Then the planks start.  Wooden bridges weave through winding, claustrophic corriders.  Slum houses are crammed in like teeth on either side; underneath, visible through cracks in the boards and foot-wide gaps between the bridge and each home, is the garbage.  More garbage than I've ever seen, about eight feet below us--a sea of decay, plastic, sewage, rotting fruit rinds, and more flies.  The stench and sweat coat my skin and hair.  In the rainy season the river often overflows, bringing the putrid black trash water above the planks and into the homes.

Children again call out hello as we shuffle by.  Teenagers are gathered around a single television in one of the homes, watching a soap opera.  A woman walks by with her shirt pulled up, revealing the curve of a breast and her small infant suckling.  She, too, is HIV-positive, G* tells us.  "Men are permitted to have outside 'girlfriends' at the brothels," he explains.  "Women are not.  They simply receive the virus, and then pass it on to their children."  We are watched with some curiosity and a bit of wariness.  The communities are familiar with G., and so we are permitted to walk into the inner workings of their neighborhoods.  He makes it clear to them that we are not here on a tour to gawk at them, but that we want to help.  We do not take any pictures and I try to commit what I've seen deep in my memory.  Some of the boards are soft and creak shrilly as we pass over them.  I grit my teeth and try not to picture falling the few feet into the mass of wet, decomposing garbage below.  The thought that men from my country would pay thousands of dollars to fly to Cambodia and prey on this situation makes me want to literally turn my head and vomit.  My cheap clothes, picked up with a thought on a last-minute trip to Target, seem clean, bright, expensive.  My ankles begin to itch with what I assume are flea bites, and I scratch them incessantly for the next two days.

Back across the road is a school project started by G.'s organization.  Three girls are gathered upstairs in a small, airy room, sewing clothes.  Three ancient-looking sewing machines line one of the walls; the girls sit on the floor and one embroiders beads by hand on a pink evening gown.  They bring out an exquisite dress the color of charcoal with rouched flowers and hand beading snaked over one shoulder.  The pen drawing of its design is taped to the wall on a piece of torn-out notebook paper.

We thank G. for everything he is doing, and tell him we think he is a hero.  He waves it off with a shake of his head, beaming, and returns to his office and the children behind the aluminum gate.  

We climb back in our trusty van, guzzle water, and spend the next half hour navigating the famous Russian market.  A young girl, a man with one leg, and a woman whose face has been completely burned follow us through the dark stall aisles and haggle us to buy from them.  I shake my head and smile, urging them away almost twenty times.  Paula is overwhelmed and keeps handing them dollar bills.  When the van door closes behind us she breaks down, sobbing as Kathy tells us that unfortunately, with the young kids and disabled sellers, the money often goes straight to a trafficker.

We have lunch at the Bodhi Tree, another fair trade cafe committed to giving disadvantaged girls opportunities.  We eat thin, flat noodles and drink mango passion shakes, trying not to feel guilty about a first-class meal after the poverty we've been in, and then cross the street to Tuol Sleng, the Pol Pot genocide museum.

I can't explain the sick, hollow feeling that I have in this place.  (I feel it again, just typing this now.)  Kathy doesn't come in with us, as she's already been here, but she explains the importance of it being part of our trip.  We cannot combat the issues of poverty, trafficking, and the general human mindset in this country without understanding what they have seen just within the past 30 and 40 years.  That dark, weary feeling I had on the first night returns, only weighted down by everything we've seen the past few days.  Our group walks the museum with Phillip, and I have this deep desire to just shut down and not feel anymore.  

((Please be warned, the below video has some VERY GRAPHIC CONTENT.))

I'm not quite sure how Phillip is able to walk us through the museum.  He has lived through this; I will not share the stories he told us here, to protect his safety and anonymity, but the horrors he has experienced are many.  Pol Pot and other officials in the Khmer Rouge pinned a number on each person they murdered and took their picture the day of their death.  Their photos fill room after room in Tuol Sleng.  It made it even that much more realistic to see the haunted look in each of their eyes, and know that very easily Phillip could have been up there staring right back at us.  "I almost die many times," Phillip tells us, more than once, each time laughing.  "But God save me."  

For the rest of us, the hopelessness begins to set in.  We stumble around each building, our eyes tired of looking at garbage and human suffering and barbed wire and the horrors of what humankind can do to one another.  There's a video at the end of the museum that we sit down to watch, and then the skies open up and heavy rain begins to beat down on the tin roof, drowning

out the sound of the video.  One by one, we get up, and stand in a line on the balcony as the rain pours around us.  Thunder cracks through the air, as loud as I've ever heard, and then lightning flashes.  There is something so good about this rain, pounding on the pavement, like God crying and reminding us of his presence, his power, his broken heart, and the rain just keeps coming down, as if it could wash it all away.

***

The last slum almost pushes me over the edge.  It is another displaced Vietnamese slum, situated far away from the inner city, out in the middle of nowhere--where the government has recently displaced their entire community.  After selling the land the community was living on to a Korean company, the government forced the residents out and placed them in an area far from jobs, transportation, education opportunities, aid groups, medical care, etc.  These people were evicted from their homes in the middle of the night, sprayed with sewage water, and many of their only belongings were razed to the ground.  They now live in varying degrees of poverty, from the nicer permanent shelter homes that look like garages, to a group that has nothing more than a tarp to cover their heads.  They have no running water, no toilet facilities, no privacy.  They are another group so easy to target by traffickers.  As I walk through their new "home" land I see an enormous dead rat, laying bloated and face up in the dirt.  

We stop in one of the tarped areas, where everyone's personal living areas are pushed together and divided by only mosquito nets.  One of the women is having trouble nursing.  The organization we are visiting for this slum has recently paid for her to deliver her baby in the hospital, after finding out that one of the women gave birth and laid in her own blood for three days before receiving any assistance.  Pas sits on her bed, coos at the baby and prays for healing.  By this time we are exhausted and everything is a blur.  There are power lines above their heads and the stream is filled with garbage and human waste.  A woman comes up to us and tells our organization leaders that her baby has bloody diarrhea, and no medical care.  They rush to help her and we, once again, get back on our bus and pull away from the nightmare.  We all sit in silence on our way to the airport, burdened, fleetingly questioning even the use for hope. 

We are in the Phnom Penh airport for hours waiting for our flight to board, eating DairyQueen blizzards for dinner and poking fun at one another.  We laugh over the smallest, silliest things, to the point of hysterics.  Because if we didn't, we would start crying and then we might never stop.

We fly back to Bangkok that night, and are grateful to see something familiar.

Love146 Partnership Trip: Day 2

Phnom Penh, April 23, 2009

We wake up at 4:30 the next morning for an early flight out to Phnom Penh. The flight attendants of Thai Airways pass deep purple orchid corsages to me, Sharon and Paula, and we pin them to the front of our shirts. After producing two passport pictures and $25 for a glittering Cambodian visa, we get in a van and take off for a Love146 partner office. The van navigates in between motobikes, trucks spilling over with boxes stacked precariously on their tops, bicycles, tuk-tuks, and entire families crammed onto a single motorcycle. Most passengers are not wearing helmets as their drivers zip and weave between imaginary traffic lines. The heat, again, is suffocating, and I hold my breath as we narrowly clear a collision with a man and his daughter. They don’t seem to notice.

Beth* greets us at the door and ushers us upstairs. The meeting room has high ceilings and bright sunlight streams in from the windows behind blinds the color of butter. The room is cooled by air conditioning until about midway through our discussion, when the power suddenly goes out. Beth laughs as if this is a normal occurrence; she has been in Cambodia for over a decade, but still has a European accent that blends back and forth between excitement, encouragement and weariness. She reminds me of what Claire Danes might look like in about ten years.  

Beth introduces us to Phillip*, a Cambodian man who plays a large role in the organization, and we gather around the meeting room table drinking glasses of purified water.  A sign on the far wall says, “On our own we travel faster, with others we travel farther.”  The organization has a network of 40 members and also hosts focus forums on topics like shelters, preparing children for court cases, law enforcement issues, etc. As Beth ticks off the issues on her fingers I am reminded again of how tangled this web is.

For example, the deck could not be more stacked against the ethnic Vietnamese living in Phnom Penh: their nonrecognition as citizens by either the Cambodian or Vietnamese governments, extreme poverty, and several cultural customs, among other things, put them square in the crosshairs for easy trafficking. Some families sell their children out of destitute poverty, but others do it for a new piece of electronic equipment for their homes. Many instances of trafficking here are not the locked-up-in-a-brothel-forever kind, but instead take the form of virginity trafficking, where a young girl is sold to a businessman for two weeks and then returned. The price of this can range from $40-$4,000, depending on the girl’s age. A four or five year old child can be “priced” at the higher end of that range, but it’s all about what the market dictates.  In a few particularly poor communities in Phnom Penh, 80-90% of families have sold one of their children.

Other issues are raised throughout the hour-long meeting; the crumbling economy has meant a rapid loss of garment industry jobs, one of the main sources of income in Cambodia, and has resulted in a large number of unemployed young women. Poverty draws traffickers like nothing else. Beth also tells us that child pornography can be bought for as little as 35 cents, and that five years ago brothels were relatively drug-free; now they are rife with methamphetamine use. If you can get a girl addicted to methamphetamines, she can work for up to 20 hours a day—and you have the ultimate control over her. Beth laughs tightly as she tells us that the same issue pertains to fishing labor slavery in areas of Thailand, but that in the West “some people are more worried about not catching dolphins for tuna.”

As the list of complications gets longer I feel myself get heavier throughout the day. It is a physical pressure, like a cloud made of iron growing in my chest. But there are also encouragements: brainstorming is evident on the colorful pieces of construction paper hanging on the surrounding walls, and diagrams fill the whiteboard. The partnership coalition is combating the different threads of the puzzle through everything from halfway houses aimed at easier reintegration to rapid response campaigns in magazine outreach to the garment district. Beth is joyful and friendly and I find myself wanting to be just like her, or at least to be her friend. She tucks her hair behind her ears when we ask how she can do it, day in, day out, and says that she has suffered post traumatic stress disorder at times so strong that it leaves her temporarily paralyzed. Then she flashes a grin, clasps her hands together and says that it’s time for lunch.

We drive to a fair-trade café that has air conditioning and fresh fruit juices. The second floor is like an oasis away from the frenetic traffic and heat of the city. I order a watermelon juice and ask Beth for her thoughts on everything from the TVPA report to what she thinks of Nicholas Kristof and the Dateline special on Svay Pak—something she says actually led to increased sightings of Western men after it aired. I am horrified, and then surprised by my own continued naïveté.

After lunch we merge back into the traffic until we turn down a hill onto a thin dirt road.  Another organization has set up shop in this neighborhood, turning an infamous brothel into a center to help the community.  Conner* greets us with a huge smile and an outstretched hand.  He's lived here for two years and the children know him, pulling on his arms, some barefoot, crowding around us as we step inside the former brothel.  They are young, elementary- and middle-school-aged, although I doubt that many of them are receiving formal schooling.  I almost can't believe my eyes; I've seen this, in research for my blog, and now I am here.  A few years ago this place was full of cell rooms no bigger than a closet; rows like stalls that held small girls as slaves.  There were no windows, and the single backdoor had been filled to the ceiling with concrete to prevent escape.  

Now the cell walls have been knocked down--all but one room, which stands as a reminder of how far this place has come.  Light streams through the open front, and children run in and out.  A mother rocks her young baby in a small hammock near the door.  Beth stands in the center of the room, glowing as she looks from left to right.  "The last time I was here, I was knocking down parts of those walls myself," she says.  "How good that felt."  Some of the girls who were rescued from the brothel are here now, helping and healing the next generation.  

A steep, rickety ladder leads up to a room on the second floor--the closest place to a hell on earth I have ever been.  The room used to be a mildewed pink: the "Virginity," or "VIP" room.  I look around the small, hot room, as Conner tells us softly that thousands of videos of child pornography have been filmed in this room. When the brothel was eventually closed down, CSI investigators from the United States and Canada flew over to extensively document it, taking pictures to help identify all of the horrific scenes it was witness to.  Hot tears well behind my sunglasses as I think about how much fear must have been in this room; how much selfishness, how little compassion.  

Today is the perfect day for us to be there, as if it were handpicked before we arrived.  A Khmer man who cares deeply for the community is in the process of moving into this very room with his family; their things are pushed against the far wall.  Normal things--lamps and books and the objects that belong to a family.  The room has been painted a soft yellow, and workers are sanding the door to make a bathroom.  We can hear laughter and voices and excitement spilling through the slats in the wall.  

We shuffle back down the stairs and outside into the daylight.  The children continue to crowd around us, tugging on our hands and asking us our names in English.  We have been told that a large percentage of the girls are still currently being trafficked, plucked off of the streets at night for the brothels still functioning in the area.  Conner treats them all as if they were his brothers and sisters.  “This eight-year-old is my little troublemaker,” he says affectionately.  "What's he do?" one of our group asks innocently.  “He’s a meth dealer and he’s pimping out some of the other kids,” he says.  

Down the street Conner shows us another establishment his organization has built and funded--this one to minister to the traffickers and pimps themselves.  The children follow us down the road, and I stoop to unpin the deep purple orchid, and give it to a girl who looks like she's about ten years old.  She is thrilled, and twirls it between her fingers.  Kathy passes out sticks of gum and speaks to the kids in Vietnamese as Conner gives us a small tour of the other facility.  I wonder if this is the hardest part of what he does; finding love for the people it's so easy to feel hatred for.  But he seems able to see much farther down the road than what I can today; and I know that his wisdom, to be able to minister to both sides of the problem, is the only way that this will ever end.  

The afternoon sky darkens with a coming storm and a breeze blows the open garbage around our feet. The kids are playing jumprope and waving, Conner in the midst of them, as we pull away.  The rain opens up and patters against the roof of the van before we are halfway back to the hotel. 

After today, I have no doubt that I've stood somewhere near the depths of what evil can look like on this earth.  And I have also seen, with my own eyes, the glimmer of redemption.

Photo by ŭn-sŭng