Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

This is a recent blog post taken from the blog of Viva, the amazing children at risk charity Rob and I are working for in Hong Kong.

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

The staff of the network could see that Veata was a good student and a quick learner. She graduated from the Get Ready programme and was encouraged to continue with ‘Bright Girls’, through which she was given an allowance so she could take advanced English lessons. Veata spent two years in the ‘Bright Girls’ programme and became a skilled seamstress and tailor – even earning money above her allowance from the sales of her clothes!

Then the effects of the global financial crisis swept through Cambodia, and Veata’s father found his construction assignments growing fewer and farther between. Even with Veata’s sales and allowance and the hard work of her family collecting trash, there wasn’t enough money to cover the cost of living. They became prime targets for traffickers, who prey on families in financial straits.

A man approached Veata’s parents with an arrangement for her that could relieve them of the poverty that threatened: he said Veata would make a good candidate for a ‘second wife’. A wealthy Asian businessman was going to be spending time in Phnom Penh on business regularly through the year, and was looking for a young live-in mistress. The man offered Veata’s parents £125 up front, with monthly payments of £75 to follow. Although they hated the idea of parting with their daughter in this way, they were becoming desperate - that money could prevent the family from going hungry and possibly losing their home.

Veata went to one of the teachers from the Bright Girl programme for help. Because of the love and care the staff at Bright Girl had shown her, she knew she could trust them with this huge problem. She was immediately taken in to the weekly boarding programme supported by the network to be kept safe from the trafficker, while the network's social workers talked about alternatives with Veata’s family. They were able to arrange a £50 microbusiness loan for the family to set up a sandwich cart. This wasn’t as much as the trafficker was offering, but Veata’s parents were willing to take any option that would keep their daughter from becoming a ‘second wife’.

Veata stayed in the care of the network boarding programme until her family’s sandwich business was set up and she could safely return home. Within four months, she’d even paid off the microloan using her monthly allowance and the income from her sewing business!

Working together, we’ve seen Veata grow from a trash collector in tattered clothes, exposed to the dangers of child sexual exploitation, to a talented seamstress who can help support her family and earns more than most factory workers in Cambodia. And even better than that, her younger sisters are now safe from the danger posed by traffickers, as the microloan from the network has lifted their family out of poverty and created a business for all of them to benefit from.

If you enjoyed this post, do check out Viva's blog for other encouraging stories, and you may also enjoy Cambodia II: Rehab House and For the Love of Cupcakes.

Cambodia II: Rehab's House

This blog post is part of a series where I'll be sharing about what we've seen and experienced in terms of the anti human trafficking work in Cambodia.

Another project just outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which really moved us was Rehab's House.

Until several years ago, Rehab's House used to be a brothel where scores of under 18 girls were kept to service the sexual needs of customers. Men typically paid US$10 to 20 to sleep with a girl if she wasn’t a virgin. In a culture where (at least for some sections of society) sleeping with a virgin is believed to bring good luck or, on the extreme end, able to purge one’s HIV, a virgin at this brothel was priced at US$300 and her price can go up to $700 if she was pretty.

I say her “price”, but she would not have received a single penny of what was paid as all the money went to the brothel owners.

At the brothel, children were kept in individual “rooms” (which was no more than a 5 feet x 7 feet cell) with a wooden bed where the sexual acts would be performed. On the wall outside each room was painted, in red, a number. The children were known as the numbers outside their rooms. Two rows of rooms ran parallel to each other, with a tiny corridor in the middle. The children were not allowed to go out of their rooms except for using the toilet etc, and if they tried to escape they would suffer grave punishment, and in the few cases of children who tried to run away they were brought back by gangsters in the vicinity who were connected with the brothel.

In 2002, International Justice Mission, working with the local police, raided the brothel, rescuing all the children who had been held in captivity, and went on to persecute the perpetrators. The children, who finally saw the light of day after living in what could only be described as hell, were then placed in an aftercare shelter operated by Agape (who also runs Rehab's House), where they could be counseled, cared for and educated so that they might have another chance at life.

The building where the brothel used to operate was subsequently majorly restructured, with the cold, dingy cells demolished (except for Room no. 9), and turned into a community centre providing supplementary schooling to children, vocational training (sewing lessons!) to women and girls, and healthcare to all in the community. The women and girls taking the sewing lessons are now able to make pillowcases as a livelihood to provide for themselves and their families. Livelihood is an extremely important key to preventing trafficking in the first place, as many who are poor and desperate to survive are often extremely vulnerable to traffickers coming along to entice/trick/persuade them into so-called “employment opportunities”.

The community where Rehab's House is located is not without lingering problems – 70% of its inhabitants are Vietnamese (and hence stateless and illegal, according to the Cambodian government, despite the fact that they have lived in the country for many years and their children were born in Cambodia; they are particularly at risk as the state does not protect them at all), most people living there are still very poor and uneducated, gangs still operate in the area and pedophiles still travel from Phnom Penh daily to transact with children.

Walking through the streets and seeing people not having or doing much, it’s tempting to get all despondent about the state of things in this community. But we’re reminded again of the progress that has been already made as a result of the immense hard work by amazing organisations such as IJM and Agape, and that widespread, long lasting change always takes time.

As we were leaving those dusty roads that evening, through the back window of the window I looked at Rehab's House again, painted in orange and yellow, and the women working on their sewing projects. What used to be a dungeon where cries of children were muffled, Rehab's House is now a lighthouse in its community, giving hope and a future to many.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Human Trafficking or For the Love of Cupcakes.

Off to Phnom Penh

I'm really excited about our trip to Cambodia tomorrow (despite the ungodly departure hour - budget airline hours).

We're going to be visiting several local projects run by members of the Chab Dai Coalition network which is the partnering network of Viva in Cambodia.

Chab Dai (literally “joining hands” in Khmer) aims to bring an end to trafficking and sexual exploitation through coalition building, community prevention, advocacy and research. There are currently 40 members in the coalition.

During the next week we will be learning first-hand from project workers on the ground about the issues of and solutions for trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia.

For the past few months we have been hearing many good things about Chab Dai from friends and contacts outside Viva, so we're really looking forward to seeing their excellent work in one of the most hardcore, difficult fields in international development.

I hope to write about some of the projects next week.

Optionless

The past few months of volunteering in the Philippines have been very educational in all sorts of ways. Two particular recent events made me realise again how difficult life can be for those who are physically unwell or seriously ill in a less economically developed part of the world.

During our time in Cebu, one evening, whilst we were travelling to an event with CFA, one of the children developed a high fever. At 6 years old, J has a petite physique, almond-shaped eyes and curly hair that hung loosely on her shoulders. Her name in Cebuano actually means a particular bird, which I have always thought is very apt, as when J speaks she does sound like a little bird singing melodiously.

J doesn’t normally cry easily but she was whimpering when I tried to help her swallow some medicine. I carried her to one of the vehicles, laid her on the seats and, in the dark, started to wipe her little body with wet cloths. I felt terrible when she couldn’t take in much water.

Her whole body felt like a furnace. Some Nehemiah girls came by the bus and said a prayer for her. I tried to comfort J by promising her some sweets when she got better.

After an hour, the fever subsided considerably. I almost cried when J finally sat up and started sipping some Coke (for the lack of better alternatives) and eating some biscuits. When we finally went home she sat on my lap whilst I held a damp towel to her forehead, and she must have been feeling a lot better as she started chirping away to her favourite Kuya (older brother).

That evening I was struck by how helpless one must feel when a child whom you care about is not well, especially if you couldn’t afford any medical help. And we, including J, are actually the lucky ones – so many don’t have access to any medical help, and even more don’t have access to clean drinking water. One of the feeding team workers told me the same night that when a street child becomes ill, he or she will usually have no choice but to bear it and hope and pray that they will get better. And the sad fact is sometimes they don’t.

Last week, in Manila, in a different context, the staff worker at a project we visited came to us with a different sort of very serious need. Leading us into her kitchen, she introduced us to her frail and pale faced son. Sitting on a bamboo chair and leaning against the window, he had tubes coming out of his nostrils and at the side of his neck there was a big patch of plaster covering a wound. The boy looked younger than his real age, and he was staring, expressionless, at the television.

He needed a new kidney, she explained, showing us several bottles of medicine which he needed to take continuously to stay alive, and to pay for the new kidney and operation would cost several million pesos (several tens of thousands of pounds).

My first thought was: oh no, not another need again. We have seen a lot of need just in the past few months.

We looked at her, and then at the boy who was still expressionless – as if to say that he had seen this scene many times before, where the visitors, though moved upon hearing about their plight, were unable to help.

Our friend said he would try to speak to the board of directors to see what they could do. We then left the little house with our hearts still sinking.

And then it occurred to me that, if I were the mother, I would have done exactly the same as what the lady did – to ask for help wherever possible. She wasn’t hysterical or breaking down in tears, she didn’t beg us, but she did tell us that she needed help. There was nothing shameful or undignified. She had no choice, nowhere to turn to; all she could do is ask.

F = m x a

When the summer ended, we discovered two days before school was due to start that the school here at CFA still had not been able to hire a science teacher, whilst the English teacher was no longer available due to personal reasons. What we also discovered, was that we were to step in to take on these lessons whilst they look for replacement teachers.

Within the next 48 hours Rob and I ploughed through the textbooks given to us for secondary school levels 1-3, only to conclude that the content was way too fact-based (and boring!) for children who may not be the most motivated bunch in learning. Most of these kids come from very difficult backgrounds – they either used to be on the street, or lived with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. The fact that the textbooks are in the English language (not their first language) doesn’t help either.

So the new challenge was to think of ways of teaching the subjects (General Science, Biology and Chemistry for me; English and Social Studies for Rob) in as interestingly a way as possible – to inspire the children to learn in the first place, but without compromising on having too little content / actual things that they could learn.

I couldn’t really remember how photosynthesis works anymore, or much about Newton’s laws, and was semi dreading my first lesson. I tried to think of why I had studied so hard in school, what motivated me, and why it didn’t seem to bother me that there were loads of facts to memorize, half of which I didn’t quite grasp until years later. The exercise forced me to rethink from first principles – about what is the whole point of learning about science, and its relevance in the lives of the children.

1.5 weeks later, I feel like I’ve been teaching for a whole month! The kids are absolutely amazing – they do want to learn, they are mostly attentive (with good classroom control techniques, which we term Tough Love), and they are actually very bright. But it’s also been very challenging to convey complex ideas to them as they don’t seem to have much of a strong foundation. I also found it slightly amusing to see how, initially, they seemed to be at their best when they were not listening to anything but instead were copying things from the board – I wondered if I was just the same, having been educated in hugely rote learning environments.

Today I just took over a class which my friend had very kindly taught last week when she was visiting the CFA project. It wasn’t the easiest class, as one-third of the kids seemed perpetually distracted. Despite remembering not liking being picked on by teachers in my school days, I found that paying attention directly on the kids who were not “with me” - working through the task with them whilst still standing at the front of the class and really encouraging them when they got anything right – actually worked, and it was fun!

Today we talked about F = m x a.

Perhaps I could reinterpret the formulae this way:

Fun in teaching = massive preparation x attending to the areas where kids have difficulties i.e. don’t move on until they understand what you’re talking about

Human Trafficking

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

- Edmund Burke

Last week during a bumpy three-hour drive to a waterfall with some visitors from Germany I listened to an mp3 of a talk which Gary Haugen gave at Holy Trinity Brompton on human trafficking. Gary Haugen, a DC lawyer, is an excellent speaker and his talk brought home to me again the reality of this problem in today’s world. He is the head of International Justice Mission, a Christian organisation dedicated to the rescue of people who have been oppressed or unjustly treated, including those who have been trafficked, and the prosecution of the perpetrators, so that justice may be realised and injustice stopped.

You can listen to the talk HERE.

It’s been said many times before but I still get shocked when I hear that there are more people held in slavery now than more than 200 years ago, before the abolition of the slave trade.

Over lunch, we asked Harald, the German pastor who started CFA some 18 years ago, about the problem of human trafficking in Cebu. Having worked in Cebu for almost two decades, he said the city is actually more dangerous than Manila in terms of children being tricked into being trafficked. He told us the story of one of the girls at CFA. Her family was very poor and lived in one of the feeding areas where CFA visited (and still visits). One day her mother announced, with pride, to one of the CFA staff who was visiting the area, that her daughter had been given a job in Manila. The staff’s suspicions were confirmed as it transpired after much probing that the mother had been persuaded by a stranger to let her daughter go to Manila to work, and in return she would be given some money. In CFA’s experience, instead of the promised new life, the girl would most likely be sold into a brothel. The mother did not intend to sell her daughter into the sex trade, but was unable to support her daughter along with the her many other children. Thankfully the girl was taken into CFA’s care before she left for Manila and she is now a smiling teenager who is petrified of being tickled!

I think the biggest problem that many of us face when it comes to thinking about these things isn’t apathy, but paralysis by despair. We feel overwhelmed by the statistics, dragged down by the facts and helpless because we think the problem is too vast or we don’t know where to begin.

Sometimes I still feel this way, but I’m reminded once and again that:

- if everyone does something, it will count eventually!

- ultimately, it’s a choice that we make, whether we choose to live life as if such things do not happen, or we choose to do what we can to help stop injustice.

So what can we actually do?

Well, I’m not an expert but I think there are at least a few things for starters:

1. We can educate ourselves more about such issues so we can decide what best we can do, and also to tell others about the issues. Here are some good sites - UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, Stop the Traffik

2. Stop the Traffik has a campaign where people are encouraged to only buy trafficking-free chocolate (on top of fair trade) and to urge chocolate producers to ensure that the cocoa they use does not involve exploitation of trafficked labour. And you can even hold your own traffick-free chocolate fondue party! See Stop the Traffik for more information.

3. Support organisations such as STT and IJM in their efforts to combat trafficking and other acts of injustice – by telling others about them and by giving financially.

4. If you’re a Christian, I would say PRAY! Pray for God to intervene to bring justice and restored lives out of these places of darkness and despair. Personally, I found that it was as I began praying, I felt more strength to get more involved in points 1-3 above too.

Back in the Land of Smiles

For the first time ever I was looking for signs for slums as our plane descended on Cebu City while the sun was setting. It escaped me why I never paid attention in the past, but this time we could see clearly that they dotted the circumference of the islands. You can tell it’s a slum by the tin roofs, usually silvery in colour, but sometimes they’re of rusty red or yellow. The odd thing was, maybe because they were so many, they seemed to blend in with the rest of the islands.
We walked off the plane and into the luggage hall, and whilst waiting for our bags I was slightly amused at the sight of people holding big bags of boxes of KrispyKreme – we had flown in from Manila – perhaps this is the latest fashion in the capital. One woman had three gigantic boxes of 12.

Outside the airport, To To, one of the workers in Nehemiah House and a former street kid himself, was there to pick us up. It has been just over two years since I was last here, when I was taking a career break after the City. I joked about his longer and curlier hair, and we were happy to see each other again.

It felt rather surreal being back on the streets of Cebu again. There seemed to be more lights, more billboards promoting mobile phones, and there are still the endless rows of stalls selling aromatic barbequed meat, and the random long queue of people outside a bank for cash machines. As we crossed the big bridge connecting the airport to the rest of Cebu, we could see a sprawling city lit up in parts by orange lights. Then, suddenly, as we neared the busier streets, we were bombarded by different smells – the exhaust from the hundreds of jeepneys cruising in and out of the undefined lanes, the enticing BBQ aroma, and the occasional open sewage.

Crossing a big intersection with huge blinking billboards just like in Piccadilly Circus, I was suddenly struck by a sense of apathy. The voice inside my head was literally saying – why bother to get involved with anything? The world will go on and the problems will be resolved slowly but ultimately. One can tell that there is a lot of wealth in this country – not least from the billboards, the Krispykremes, the big SUVs with black-out windows, so maybe the prosperity will ultimately save the rest of the country.

What can we, small potatoes as we are, actually do? What difference can we make?

Then, I was reminded of a serious saying – when I think of what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think that there are no little things (Bruce Barton - extracted from Rob’s motivational talk!), and a lighter one which I found on the fridge of some good friends – if you think you’re too small to make a difference, try being in bed with a mosquito!

I have a feeling it’s going to a real battle of ideologies as we volunteer on the street children project for the next three months.

Cebu: Part I of III: The Real and the Surreal

Each day the feeding team sets offs at around 4pm in a van stocked up with several large pots of steaming rice and the nutritious food that it has prepared, large containers of water, along with plastic plates and cups. When there are two feeding locations (with up to 200 children in each), the day does not finish until about 9 or 10pm.

One afternoon we arrived in a slum area when the rain had just stopped. The area looked like a gigantic dumping ground and was very wet and muddy after the downpour. Even before the van pulled in the children started running towards us and jumping onto the sides of the van like hyperactive monkeys, giggling and calling out our names. I watched with worry as they very skilfully dodged the muddier puddles and hopped around on the dryer patches, avoiding the splashing of the thick grey mud. Soon we were embraced by the smell of sewage; I instinctively held my nose as I got off the van to a growing crowd of smiling, expectant children.

I stood rather speechless at the sight of nine and ten-year-olds carrying smaller children on their backs, not seeming to mind the mud-stained flip-flops brushing against the back of their t-shirts. They took care of them as if they were their babies, taking turns when they got tired. I have also seen older children giving their food to younger ones. Most of them are not even related. The children look out and care for younger ones because they know what it means to be small and vulnerable, and they do this out of sheer kindness and love and not because they have anything to gain from it. It really makes me question my own heart, how often I don’t even share with people I know, let alone strangers totally unrelated to me.

The children were so happy to see the team and eager to sit on the mats which we had brought, waiting to listen to the Bible stories for the day. My sister, who, like me, is not used to noisy and overly excited children, pleaded with them to sit down and keep quiet. They battled with one another for the pieces of paper being given out for them to write their answers to a quiz we had prepared - they were so keen that when the quiz ended they expressed disappointment that there weren’t more questions to be answered! Children do desire to learn don’t they, but so many in the world lack the opportunities to do so.

After handing out plates of food from the candle-lit van (as the light at the back of the car was broken) to what seemed like an endless queue of children we set off for the second feeding location situated at a busy roundabout in the city. The children there seemed scruffier and dirtier and certainly didn’t smell very nice, but again they were so happy and excited when our van pulled in, and they kept asking for my sister’s name as they had not met her before. As soon as they found out what she’s called they were all chanting “Ate (= big sister) Tina” and wanting to play with her (in the form of Tina holding their arms and spinning them around). One girl who didn’t speak much English beckoned me over and pointed to the new bandage on her lower right leg. Barbara, a volunteer from Switzerland, had treated her wound earlier. Many of the street children are often covered with nasty cuts which take ages to heal because of the lack of hygiene and basic essentials such as antiseptic cream and bandages. What Barbara did was a simple act, but it meant so much to the girl.

Towards the end of the feeding, the children and adults started putting the used plastic plates and cups in one of the large basins. I was busy arranging the plates and cups into a pile when a man, wanting another drink of water, picked up a used cup and rinsed it in the basin with the mix of water and leftover sauce from the meal. I stared at the dirty cup and felt sorry for him, but he smiled and thanked me in English as he gulped down the lukewarm water.

The topic of happiness is super hot in the West these days. Some say one’s happiness is dependent on one’s expectations. Is that true? Were those children playing in Mud Land happy because they didn’t expect anything other than mud and sewage smell? Was the little girl grateful and content because she didn’t (and couldn’t) expect anything beyond a small piece of bandage? Did the man wanting a drink of water smile and thank me because that’s all he wanted? I suppose one could argue that one of the reasons why many in richer countries, despite having more in material terms, are still unhappy is because for some reason we are always wanting and expecting more (and more) and we are not content with what we already have.

But is that it? Are monks and nuns happier people necessarily? From what I saw in Cebu it seems that one can be happy even if he doesn’t have much. In fact, it seems that the more we have the unhappier/more dissatisfied we become, though of course that’s not what the world of advertising would like us to think. I suspect many of us probably resonate with this deep within but curiously most of us still carry on doing what we have always done – it seems most natural to do so.

I’m not saying possessions are evil, but if I was honest, I would admit that more often than not possessions do seem to take over me and render me powerless to say no to acquiring more and more. Just two hours before writing this I was walking down the street in central Brighton. As I passed by the shops I found myself drawn to many window displays (of nice clothes, books, DVDs), a familiar desire rising within me crying out for the items. It was almost as if I would be happier and more complete if only I could acquire another skirt (despite being seriously convicted for the past months that I have way too many clothes), or that book, or just those two DVDs. But I know that that’s simply not the case - my heart will actually continue to long for more after being temporarily gratified by my purchases. Oliver James in his book Affluenza suggests some principles as antidote to the modern day “virus” of wanting more incessantly. I have yet to read it, but just browsing the interestingly worded chapter titles I have decided that the book is probably buying (from a second hand bookshop perhaps!).

The Gospel of Matthew records Jesus saying some rather radical things which seem to be words echoed from a distant world. One such thing was: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Where is my heart? Is it with the poor and those without, or the window displays?