Bangla Road messes with my head. On the surface it is the ultimate party scene and the streets are crammed with tourists and tourist attractions but the flashy lights are only half of the story. Beneath the surface is the reality of poverty, abuse and exploitation.
Every other night we dress up and head out to the bars with the intention of building relationships with the women who work there. We walk the streets and ask God to direct us to the places we are to go and the women we need to meet that night. We ask him to give us favour and wisdom which he does.
We greet the girls in Thai, they wave us in and we sit down, buy pop and ask them to play a game with us. They grab connect 4, jenga or jackpot to play with us or invite us over to a large round of wood and we play a game where you have to pound in a nail with a pointed hammer. I have now officially been beaten at connect 4 more times than I count. It gets rather tiring to play the same games night after night, the girls themselves get bored with it, but it’s worth it for the conversations that come out of it.
As we play round after round of connect 4 our team asks the girls questions. We find out their names, we ask them about their families and what they like to do when they aren’t working, we ask how long they’ve worked there and whether they like it. In broken english they each tell us a similar story. They don’t like it, don’t want to stay there and are only working there because they don’t know where else to work.
The most disheartening thing about the time we spend with these women is the way they are always looking over us and out into the crowds of tourists moving past as they watch for the next customer. But God is not absent here. Even in the midst of the chaos that is Bangla road it is clear that God’s hand is upon the girls that work there that he has an amazing plan and purpose for each life.
The first night I went to Bangla road was hard and overwhelming. I felt so insignificant and small among the crowds of people and wondered at how I would ever make a difference there. However as the nights went on I became more fully aware of who I am and the power that I have been given.
It is dark on Bangla road but the light of the world lives inside of me and what good is light unless it’s shining in the darkness?
