The girls come from a town two hours away from Chiang Mai. They have the responsibility of helping their families financially. Their families are farmers. They work in the fields planting corn and growing beans.
This is how the girls too, tried to make a living, but were not able to make a sustainable amount. So the girls, with their two older sisters left for the city.
Sumalee (15) is the third youngest in a sibling group of 12. Kanya (13) is the third oldest of 7. Their sisters, ages 16 and 17 also work in the same bar on “bar street”.
They have lived in Chiang Mai for one year and only started working in the bar about three months ago. They were selling things at the market, but because of the meager living that provided and the far distance from their house, with the expensive transportation they were not able to continue with that. Then by word of mouth they heard there was good money to be earned by working in a bar.
When they first started they thought the bars were just social places where people gathered to drink. It wasn’t until their first encounters with the men that they realized, there was no money to be earned by serving drinks.
There is very little about their situation that they get to choose, or maybe it is just that their choices look much different than mine did at age 13.
Me [Kristen]:Sumalee and Kanya: Should I spend the weekend with my grandparents? Or do I stay at home and have friends sleep over? Do I let this man, old enough to be my grandfather, touch me here and kiss me there so I can pay my rent? or do I run the risk of getting evicted?
Half the Sky lays out an agenda for the world’s women and three major abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which needlessly claims one woman a minute…. We know there are many worthy causes competing for attention in the world. We focus on this one because this kind of oppression feels transcendent – and so does the opportunity.
